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Troubleshooting Guide

Find answers and diagnostic steps for common issues encountered during API test execution.

1. Connection Refused (ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:3000)

Section titled “1. Connection Refused (ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:3000)”

Symptom

Section titled “Symptom”

Test case status displays ⚠ ERROR: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:3000.

Causes & Fixes

Section titled “Causes & Fixes”
  • Server Not Running: Verify that your local API server is active in another terminal tab or background task (npm run dev or python main.py).
  • Port Mismatch: Check that the port number in your .rcase baseUrl matches the listening port of your backend.
  • localhost vs 127.0.0.1: On some Node or Windows environments, IPv6 localhost resolves to ::1 while Express listens on IPv4 127.0.0.1. Try changing baseUrl to http://127.0.0.1:3000.

2. Request Timeout (ERROR: Request timed out after 10000ms)

Section titled “2. Request Timeout (ERROR: Request timed out after 10000ms)”

Symptom

Section titled “Symptom”

Test case execution halts and reports timeout after 10 seconds.

Causes & Fixes

Section titled “Causes & Fixes”
  • Backend Deadlock: Your endpoint might be hung waiting for a database transaction or missing a res.send() / res.json() call in Express.
  • Heavy Endpoint: If your endpoint performs slow operations (PDF rendering, AI inference, large database migrations), increase the timeout in .vscode/settings.json: 
    "routecase.requestTimeout": 30000

3. Chained Variable Shows {{myVar}} in Raw Form

Section titled “3. Chained Variable Shows {{myVar}} in Raw Form”

Symptom

Section titled “Symptom”

The outgoing URL or header contains the literal text {{myVar}} instead of the extracted token.

Causes & Fixes

Section titled “Causes & Fixes”
  • Running Case in Isolation: If you click ▶ Run Case on Step #2 without running Step #1 first, myVar has not been captured yet in the session store. Click ▶ Run All Cases to execute sequentially from the beginning.
  • Dot-Notation Path Mismatch: Check the exact JSON structure returned by Step #1. If the server returns { "data": { "token": "..." } }, writing "capture": { "myVar": "token" } will fail. You must write "capture": { "myVar": "data.token" }.

4. Query Parameter Separator Encoded as %3F

Section titled “4. Query Parameter Separator Encoded as %3F”

Symptom

Section titled “Symptom”

Server returns 404 Cannot GET /api/search%3Fquery=....

Causes & Fixes

Section titled “Causes & Fixes”
  • Update to RouteCase v0.1.1 or higher. Earlier pre-release versions had a URL constructor bug that was completely resolved in commit 8f1a700.

5. Secret Token Showing as [REDACTED]

Section titled “5. Secret Token Showing as [REDACTED]”

Symptom

Section titled “Symptom”

In the Results Webview panel, your Authorization or x-api-key header displays [REDACTED].

Explanation

Section titled “Explanation”

This is an intentional security feature. RouteCase automatically sanitizes credentials before displaying them in UI panels or tree views to prevent accidental exposure during screen sharing, screenshots, or screen recordings. The actual un-redacted token is sent over the wire to your API server.