When integrating identity verification services like the WhatsApp Business Checker, the quality of your input data is the first line of defense. Because these services operate on a phone-first basis—processing one identifier per request—your integration layer must ensure that the data sent to the API is correctly formatted and validated before it leaves your infrastructure.
Building local test fixtures allows you to simulate the boundary between your application logic and the external service, ensuring that your system handles inputs consistently.
The Problem: Input Variability
External verification services expect clean, normalized inputs. If you pass malformed phone numbers or unsupported identifiers, you risk unnecessary API calls that provide no actionable signal. By building a local fixture layer, you can validate the shape of your data before it ever hits the network.
Creating a Local Fixture
Your fixture should act as a gatekeeper. Instead of sending raw user input directly to your service adapter, route it through a validation layer that matches the expected input constraints of the WhatsApp Business Checker.
Valid Example (Conceptual)
// Conceptual: Validate input shape before integration
const validateInput = (input) => {
// Ensure the input is a valid phone identifier format
// and ready for a single_identifier_api request
if (isSupportedPhoneFormat(input)) {
return { isValid: true, data: normalize(input) };
}
return { isValid: false, error: 'Unsupported identifier' };
};
Invalid Example (Conceptual)
// Conceptual: Catching invalid shapes early
const rawInput = "user@example.com"; // WhatsApp Business Checker expects phone only
const result = validateInput(rawInput);
if (!result.isValid) {
console.error("Integration boundary check failed: Identifier type mismatch");
}
Integration Review Checklist
Before deploying your integration, verify your fixture against these criteria:
- [ ] Identifier Type: Does the fixture enforce the phone-first requirement for the WhatsApp Business Checker?
- [ ] Single Identifier: Does the logic prevent batching multiple identifiers into a single request?
- [ ] Normalization: Is the phone number formatted consistently according to the requirements of the service?
- [ ] Boundary Separation: Is the validation logic decoupled from the actual API call logic?
Conclusion
By moving validation to a local fixture, you reduce the noise in your integration layer. Whether you are using the Per-call API for specific service signals or the Unified Score API for risk-based decision support, the principle remains the same: validate locally, verify remotely. For more details on supported services, visit the official documentation.
This article was drafted with AI assistance and reviewed before publishing.
