Stripe API resilience testing

Summary

Test how your app handles Stripe API errors, rate limiting, and slow responses using Dev Proxy. This sample complements stripe-mock by adding chaos engineering capabilities that help you build more resilient payment integrations.

Compatibility

Contributors

• Waldek Mastykarz

Version history

Minimal path to awesome

1. Get the sample:

   • Download just this sample:

     npx gitload-cli https://github.com/pnp/proxy-samples/tree/main/samples/stripe-resilience-testing

     or

   • Download as a .ZIP file and unzip it, or

   • Clone this repository

2. Start Dev Proxy:

   cd stripe-resilience-testing
   devproxy

3. Make requests to the Stripe API through the proxy to see random errors:

   # Try creating a payment intent - may get card_declined, insufficient_funds, etc.
   curl -ikx http://127.0.0.1:8000 https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents -X POST
   
   # Try creating a charge - may get card errors or server errors
   curl -ikx http://127.0.0.1:8000 https://api.stripe.com/v1/charges -X POST
   
   # Run multiple requests quickly to trigger rate limiting
   for i in {1..30}; do curl -ikx http://127.0.0.1:8000 https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers; done

Features

This sample simulates realistic failure scenarios for the Stripe API:

Latency simulation

All requests are delayed between 200ms and 1500ms to simulate real-world network conditions and slow API responses.

Rate limiting

The proxy simulates Stripe’s rate limiting behavior:

• Limit: 25 requests per second
• Returns 429 Too Many Requests with proper Stripe error format when exceeded
• Includes RateLimit-* headers and stripe-should-retry: true

Random error injection (50% failure rate)

Payment-specific errors (402 Payment Required)

• card_declined - Generic decline
• card_declined with insufficient_funds
• card_declined with lost_card
• card_declined with do_not_honor
• expired_card - Card has expired
• processing_error - Temporary processing issue

Server errors (500, 503)

• api_error - Unexpected server error
• api_error - Service unavailable with Retry-After header

Request errors (400, 401, 409)

• parameter_missing - Missing required parameters
• invalid_api_key - Authentication failure
• idempotency_error - Idempotency key conflict

Resource-specific errors

• charge_already_refunded - Refund on already-refunded charge
• invoice_no_customer_line_items - Nothing to invoice

Configuration

Adjusting the failure rate

Change the error rate in .devproxy/devproxyrc.json:

"stripeErrors": {
  "rate": 50  // Percentage of requests that will fail (0-100)
}

Adjusting latency

Modify the latency range:

"latencyPlugin": {
  "minMs": 200,
  "maxMs": 1500
}

Adjusting rate limits

Configure rate limiting behavior:

"rateLimitingStripe": {
  "rateLimit": 25,              // Requests allowed per window
  "resetTimeWindowSeconds": 1   // Window duration
}

Running with specific plugins disabled

# No latency (faster testing)
devproxy --no-latency

# No random errors (only rate limiting)
devproxy -f 0

Use cases

This sample is useful for:

• Building resilient payment flows - Test retry logic, error handling, and user-facing error messages
• CI/CD pipeline testing - Verify your app handles Stripe failures gracefully
• Load testing - Simulate rate limiting before hitting production limits
• Chaos engineering - Randomly inject failures to find weak points
• Developer training - Help developers understand Stripe error responses

Complementing stripe-mock

stripe-mock is great for:

• ✅ Request/response validation
• ✅ Happy path testing
• ✅ Complete API coverage from OpenAPI spec

This Dev Proxy sample adds:

• ✅ Random error injection
• ✅ Latency simulation
• ✅ Rate limiting simulation
• ✅ Chaos engineering scenarios

Use both together for comprehensive Stripe integration testing!

Help

We do not support samples, but this community is always willing to help, and we want to improve these samples. We use GitHub to track issues, which makes it easy for community members to volunteer their time and help resolve issues.

You can try looking at issues related to this sample to see if anybody else is having the same issues.

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Disclaimer

THIS CODE IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.