---
# quotesdb-z43c
title: '[TRIAGE] HTTP client selection for integration tests — reqwest vs hyper vs ureq (tokio vs blocking)'
status: completed
type: task
priority: high
created_at: 2026-03-10T23:32:05Z
updated_at: 2026-03-10T23:32:05Z
---

<context>
This is a triage decision ticket. It must be resolved before dependent implementation tickets can proceed.
</context>

<question>
HTTP client for integration tests: should we use reqwest (async, tokio), hyper (low-level), or ureq (synchronous/blocking)?
</question>

<options>
1. **reqwest** — most ergonomic, async, works well with tokio::test. Adds a heavier dependency but is widely used.
2. **hyper** — low-level, minimal dependencies. More verbose.
3. **ureq** — synchronous, no async runtime needed. Simple but requires spawning a background thread to run the server.
</options>

<resolution>
**Chosen approach: Option 1 — `reqwest` with `#[tokio::test]`.**

The API server is Axum + Tokio. `reqwest` is the idiomatic async HTTP client in this stack:
- `#[tokio::test]` + `reqwest` is the standard Rust integration-testing pattern for Axum services.
- `features = ["json"]` enables ergonomic `.json()` request bodies and `.json::<T>()` response
  deserialization — essential for testing JSON API endpoints.
- Dev-dependency only: the weight of the crate does not affect the production binary size.

Options 2 (hyper) and 3 (ureq) were ruled out:
- hyper 1.x has a complex, low-level API that adds boilerplate with no test-writing benefit.
- ureq is synchronous; using it with an async Axum server would require spawning a background
  thread for the server in every test, adding avoidable setup complexity.

Implementation ticket **5f5ba0** (already exists and is correctly specified) captures all
necessary work: adds `reqwest = { version = "0.12", features = ["json"] }`, `tokio`, `serde_json`,
and `tempfile` to `[dev-dependencies]` in `Cargo.toml`. No new ticket is required.
</resolution>

<commit>
`chore(quotesdb): resolve triage — http-client-selection-for-integration-tests-reqwest-vs-hyper`
</commit>