Getting ready

For example, let's say we have a small CSV file of invoice data that we want to use to drive our tests:

1,comp1,100.0,2014-12-01 00:00:00
2,comp2,200.0,2014-12-02 00:00:00
3,comp3,300.0,2014-12-03 00:00:00

You can find this data in <chapter2 samples>/invoice.csv.

We will read each line and extract the values into properties, for example, to do something useful, for example, populating a web service request.

I have provided a completed SoapUI project GroovyFiles-soapui-project.xml in the Chapter2 samples.

How to do it...

I'm going to break this down into three separate Groovy TestSteps: one to read the test data, another to extract it, and another to loop until all rows are processed. Perform the following steps:

This example doesn't actually use the test data, but this would be an easy next step for us.

How it works...

The first step exploits the Groovy File class to read in the invoices.csv file. The Groovy File class is more convenient to use than the standard Java equivalent, and is imported automatically by Groovy. The eachLine method allows us to append (using left shift <<) each full line from the CSV file to a rows collection that is stored in the SoapUI context.

We also add currentRowIndex to the context object to keep track of the current row as we iterate through the TestSteps for each row.

The GetNextRowAndExractValues Groovy TestStep extracts the current row from the context and splits the row string by a comma to get an array of field values. Finally currentRowIndex is then incremented and the text Row #$currentRowIndex processed is returned just to provide some debugging output in the TestCase window. It's inside the GetNextRowAndExractValues Groovy TestStep that we could use the invoice CSV values (extracted to variables invoiceId, invoiceCompany, invoiceAmount and invoiceDueDate) to test something or alternatively pass them to another TestStep, for example, use them to populate a web service request (see below example).

Lastly, the LoopIfMoreRows TestStep checks whether there are any rows left, and if so, uses the tesRunner.gotoStepByName() method to repeat the GetNextRowAndExtractValues TestStep.

There's more...

Building on the previous example, the invoice CSV values could be used in a request for a test web service call. To do that, we would need to put the invoice values somewhere where we can accesses them from a subsequent REST Test Request TestStep or (SOAP) Test Request TestStep.

The context object is a good place to set and get TestStep properties and can be used to pass the 'state' between TestSteps.

So, if we inserted the previous test steps around the last chapter's invoice CRUD service's POST REST Test Request TestStep like the one shown in the following screenshot:

Then, we can add the following lines of Groovy just after extracting the values in GetNextRowAndExtractValues:

//Create these context properties for use as parameters in the subsequent test steps
context["invoiceCompany"]=invoiceCompany
context["invoiceAmount"]=invoiceAmount

Then, we can access these context properties using the ${property} syntax in the request body of the POST REST Test Request TestStep to create an invoice:

{"Invoice": {
   "companyName": "${invoiceCompany}",
   "amount": "${invoiceAmount}"
}}

Running these steps will then call the invoice CRUD service's POST method for each row of CSV invoice data. To see this working, start the service implementation (see the Generating SoapUI tests with REST discovery recipe of Chapter 1, Testing and Developing Web Service Stubs With SoapUI, for more info) and take a look at Invoice-CRUD-Project-soapui-project.xml in the Chapter 2 samples.

If you need to work with JSON or XML file data, then take a look at the Groovy JSON and XML Slurpers (see the following links). They are easy to use and should take care of your parsing needs.

See also