# Target Host

The target host is the host on which the API to be tested can be found. Gabbi intends to preserve the flow and semantics of HTTP interactions as much as possible, and every HTTP request needs to be directed at a host of some form. Gabbi provides three ways to control this:

- Using WSGITransport of httpx to provide a `WSGI` environment on directly attached to a `WSGI` application (see intercept examples).

- Using fully qualified `url` values in the YAML defined tests (see full examples).

- Using a host and (optionally) port defined at test build time (see live examples).

The intercept and live methods are mutually exclusive per test builder, but either kind of test can freely intermix fully qualified URLs into the sequence of tests in a YAML file.

For Python-based test driven development and local tests the intercept style of testing lowers test requirements (no web server required) and is fast. Interception is performed as part of the per-test-case http client. Configuration or database setup may be performed using Fixtures.

For the implementation of the above see `build_tests()`.