Http call parameters SoapUI - http

How can I Parameterize an http call parameter in soapui to read parameters from a txt file for each iteration.
If needed can the parameters be encoded(url or gzip) before the call was sent?
Any help (pointers/links/code) is greatly appreciated? Thank You

Use groovy script test step to read data from txt file and store the data in TestCase property .
Something like this would work:
String fileContents = new File('/path/to/file').text;
testRunner.testCase.setPropertyValue(property_name, fileContents);
More information about groovy script steps here.
You can access this property as ${#TestCase#property_name} in your requests. Then you can use template parameters for your request url - I've already answered about it here.

If i'm not wrong you are asking about parametrization of URL which you send as HTTP Request for your Rest call. Let me explain you with an example :
Suppose you are looking for a resource and invoking the WebService using the GET method by making use of the ResourceID already present in the DB...Parametrize it as below :
http://${#Project#HOST}:${#Project#PORT}/rest/${#Project#WebApplicationName}/Resource/${#TestCase#ResourceID}
where HOST, PORT, WebApplicationName are the Project Level properties and ResourceID is a Test Case Level property(as it may change with the test cases i.e., dynamic in nature).
This is my approach of parametrization instead of taking it from a local file. Hope this helps!

Related

JMeter "forgets" variable value defined via Regular Expressioin Extractor

I did create a simple testcase in JMeter.
Open a form and all it's content (css, images etc) :
GET /
GET /css/site.css
GET /favicon.ico
GET /fonts/specific-fonts.woff
GET /images/banner.png
Wait a little...
Post the values
POST /
Receive the "Thank You" page.
- GET /thanks
In the response on the first GET is a hidden input field which contains a token. This token needs to be included in the POST as well.
Now I use the "Regular Expression Extractor" of JMeter to get the token from the response. So far, so good.
Then, after retreiving all the other contents I create the POST message, using the variable name in the RegExp-Extractor in the value field of the token parameter.
But... when executing the testcase it fills in the default value given and not the actual value of the token.
So... first step in debugging this issue was to add a dummy-HTTP-GET request directly after I get the token. In this GET request I also add the token parameter with the token variable as value, but now I can easily check the parameter by looking at the access-log on my webserver.
In this case... the URL looks promising. It contains the actual token value in the GET, but it still uses the default value in the POST.
Second step in debugging was to use the "Debug Sampler" and the "View Results Tree".
By moving the Debug Sampler between the different steps I found out the value of the token-variable is back to the default value after I receive the CSS.
So... now the big question is...
How can I make JMeter to remember my variable value until the end of my test-script ?
JMeter doesn't "forget" variables. However variables scope is limited to the current Thread Group. You can convert JMeter variable to JMeter Property which have "global" scope by i.e. using Beanshell Post Processor with the following code:
props.put("myVar", vars.get("myVar"));
Or by using __setProperty() function. See How to Use Variables in Different Thread Groups guide for details.
As you found it your problem comes from a misunderstanding of scoping rules in jmeter.
https://jmeter.apache.org/usermanual/test_plan.html#scoping_rules
In your case, just put the post processor of the request that will give you the response containing the child node.
Also I think you don't need to share this token with other threads so don't use properties as proposed in the alternate answer.

Is it valid to combine a form POST with a query string?

I know that in most MVC frameworks, for example, both query string params and form params will be made available to the processing code, and usually merged into one set of params (often with POST taking precedence). However, is it a valid thing to do according to the HTTP specification? Say you were to POST to:
http://1.2.3.4/MyApplication/Books?bookCode=1234
... and submit some update like a change to the book name whose book code is 1234, you'd be wanting the processing code to take both the bookCode query string param into account, and the POSTed form params with the updated book information. Is this valid, and is it a good idea?
Is it valid according HTTP specifications ?
Yes.
Here is the general syntax of URL as defined in those specs
http_URL = "http:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path [ "?" query ]]
There is no additional constraints on the form of the http_URL. In particular, the http method (i.e. POST,GET,PUT,HEAD,...) used don't add any restriction on the http URL format.
When using the GET method : the server can consider that the request body is empty.
When using the POST method : the server must handle the request body.
Is it a good idea ?
It depends what you need to do. I suggest you this link explaining the ideas behind GET and POST.
I can think that in some situation it can be handy to always have some parameters like the user language in the query part of the url.
I know that in most MVC frameworks, for example, both query string params and form params will be made available to the processing code, and usually merged into one set of params (often with POST taking precedence).
Any competent framework should support this.
Is this valid
Yes. The POST method in HTTP does not impose any restrictions on the URI used.
is it a good idea?
Obviously not, if the framework you are going to use is still clue-challenged. Otherwise, it depends on what you want to accomplish. The major use case (redirection of a data subset to a new POST target) has been irretrievably broken by browser implementations (all mechanically following the broken lead of Mosaic/Netscape), so the considerations here are mostly theoretical.

Designing proper REST URIs

I have a Java component which scans through a set of folders (input/processing/output) and returns the list of files in JSON format.
The REST URL for the same is:
GET http://<baseurl>/files/<foldername>
Now, I need to perform certain actions on each of the files, like validate, process, delete, etc. I'm not sure of the best way to design the REST URLs for these actions.
Since its a direct file manipulation, I don't have any unique identifier for the files, except their paths. So I'm not sure if the following is a good URL:
POST http://<baseurl>/file/validate?path=<filepath>
Edit: I would have ideally liked to use something like /file/fileId/validate. But the only unique id for files is its path, and I don't think I can use that as part of the URL itself.
And finally, I'm not sure which HTTP verb to use for such custom actions like validate.
Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Anand
When you implement a route like http:///file/validate?path you encode the action in your resource that's not a desired effect when modelling a resource service.
You could do the following for read operations
GET http://api.example.com/files will return all files as URL reference such as
http://api.example.com/files/path/to/first
http://api.example.com/files/path/to/second
...
GET http://api.example.com/files/path/to/first will return validation results for the file (I'm using JSON for readability)
{
name : first,
valid : true
}
That was the simple read only part. Now to the write operations:
DELETE http://api.example.com/files/path/to/first will of course delete the file
Modelling the file processing is the hard part. But you could model that as top level resource. So that:
POST http://api.example.com/FileOperation?operation=somethingweird will create a virtual file processing resource and execute the operation given by the URL parameter 'operation'. Modelling these file operations as resources gives you the possibility to perform the operations asynchronous and return a result that gives additional information about the process of the operation and so on.
You can take a look at Amazon S3 REST API for additional examples and inspiration on how to model resources. I can highly recommend to read RESTful Web Services
Now, I need to perform certain actions on each of the files, like validate, process, delete, etc. I'm not sure of the best way to design the REST URLs for these actions. Since its a direct file manipulation, I don't have any unique identified for the files, except their paths. So I'm not sure if the following is a good URL: POST http:///file/validate?path=
It's not. /file/validate doesn't describe a resource, it describes an action. That means it is functional, not RESTful.
Edit: I would have ideally liked to use something like /file/fileId/validate. But the only unique id for files is its path, and I don't think I can use that as part of the URL itself.
Oh yes you can! And you should do exactly that. Except for that final validate part; that is not a resource in any way, and so should not be part of the path. Instead, clients should POST a message to the file resource asking it to validate itself. Luckily, POST allows you to send a message to the file as well as receive one back; it's ideal for this sort of thing (unless there's an existing verb to use instead, whether in standard HTTP or one of the extensions such as WebDAV).
And finally, I'm not sure which HTTP verb to use for such custom actions like validate.
POST, with the action to perform determined by the content of the message that was POSTed to the resource. Custom “do something non-standard” actions are always mapped to POST when they can't be mapped to GET, PUT or DELETE. (Alas, a clever POST is not hugely discoverable and so causes problems for the HATEOAS principle, but that's still better than violating basic REST principles.)
REST requires a uniform interface, which in HTTP means limiting yourself to GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, HEAD, etc.
One way you can check on each file's validity in a RESTful way is to think of the validity check not as an action to perform on the file, but as a resource in its own right:
GET /file/{file-id}/validity
This could return a simple True/False, or perhaps a list of the specific constraint violations. The file-id could be a file name, an integer file number, a URL-encoded path, or perhaps an unencoded path like:
GET /file/bob/dir1/dir2/somefile/validity
Another approach would be to ask for a list of the invalid files:
GET /file/invalid
And still another would be to prevent invalid files from being added to your service in the first place, ie, when your service processes a PUT request with bad data:
PUT /file/{file-id}
it rejects it with an HTTP 400 (Bad Request). The body of the 400 response could contain information on the specific error.
Update: To delete a file you would of course use the standard HTTP REST verb:
DELETE /file/{file-id}
To 'process' a file, does this create a new file (resource) from one that was uploaded? For example Flickr creates several different image files from each one you upload, each with a different size. In this case you could PUT an input file and then trigger the processing by GET-ing the corresponding output file:
PUT /file/input/{file-id}
GET /file/output/{file-id}
If the processing isn't near-instantaneous, you could generate the output files asynchronously: every time a new input file is PUT into the web service, the web service starts up an asynchronous activity that eventually results in the output file being created.

Is it considered bad practice to perform HTTP POST without entity body?

I need to invoke a process which doesn't require any input from the user, just a trigger. I plan to use POST /uri without a body to trigger the process. I want to know if this is considered bad from both HTTP and REST perspectives?
I asked this question on the IETF HTTP working group a few months ago. The short answer is: NO, it's not a bad practice (but I suggest reading the thread for more details).
Using a POST instead of a GET is perfectly reasonable, since it also instructs the server (and gateways along the way) not to return a cached response.
POST is completely OK. In difference of GET with POST you are changing the state of the system (most likely your trigger is "doing" something and changing data).
I used POST already without payload and it "feels" OK. One thing you should do when using POST without payload: Pass header Content-Length: 0. I remember problems with some proxies when I api-client didn't pass it.
If you use POST /uri without a body it is something like using a function which does not take an argument .e.g int post (void); so it is reasonable to have function to your resource class which can change the state of an object without having an argument. If you consider to implement the Unix touch function for a URI, is not it be good choice?
Yes, it's OK to send a POST request without a body and instead use query string parameters. But be careful if your parameters contain characters that are not HTTP valid you will have to encode them.
For example if you need to POST 'hello world' to and end point you would have to make it look like this: http://api.com?param=hello%20world
Support for the answers that POST is OK in this case is that in Python's case, the OpenAPI framework "FastAPI" generates a Swagger GUI (see image) that doesn't contain a Body section when a method (see example below) doesn't have a parameter to accept a body.
the method "post_disable_db" just accepts a path parameter "db_name" and doesn't have a 2nd parameter which would imply a mandatory body.
#router.post('/{db_name}/disable',
status_code=HTTP_200_OK,
response_model=ResponseSuccess,
summary='',
description=''
)
async def post_disable_db(db_name: str):
try:
response: ResponseSuccess = Handlers.databases_handler.post_change_db_enabled_state(db_name, False)
except HTTPException as e:
raise (e)
except Exception as e:
logger.exception(f'Changing state of DB to enabled=False failed due to: {e.__repr__()}')
raise HTTPException(HTTP_500_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR, detail=e.__repr__())
return response

Erlang: HTTP GET Parameters with Inets

This post indicates how to make a simple GET HTTP request with Erlang's Inets application.
Sometimes, URLs have GET parameters:
http://example.net/item?parameter1=12&parameter2=1431&parameter3=8765
Besides including the parameters in the URL itself, is there a way to create variables and then send them with the request?
Example appreciated.
ssl:start(),
application:start(inets),
httpc:request(post,
{"https://postman-echo.com/post",
[],"text/plain","parameter1=12&parameter2=1431&parameter3=8765"},
[], []).
You can use this example to use string interpolation to make a variable for parameter1..parameter3=8765.

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