testng - HTTP REST testing behind Login - http

Question

I have setup a project for testing HTTP REST application using testNG / Maven / Springs RestTemplate.
I use it to do functional testing, multiple calls to the REST application are contained within suites to mimic user processes.
This is working fine.
Know we have turned on authentication.
Question is how to do this with testNG? How can i (only once) login for my test suite.
I can use a #BeforeSuite and call the loginpage, login and catch the cookie needed for all other requests. But where do i store this cookie so all test cases can add it?
I propably have to add some code to the tests to add the cookie of course....but how do i get hold of that?
I looked into #parameter and #dataprovider, but these seem not help me much...
Any help/suggestion is much appreciated.

Answer 1

I have created a workable solution.
What I have done is worked with a singleton object and with the #dataprovider, to get the data to the test:
The dataprovider creates a singleton object.
The singleton object calls the login page in its creation and will after every call from the different tests return the cookie information.
Maybe it is a bit of a hack, but it works.

Answer 2

The Singleton solution is somewhat heavy-handed as it prevents any parallelization of tests in the future.
There are some ways to solve this problem. One is to pass a ITestContext instance to your #BeforeSuite/#BeforeTest and #BeforeClass configuration methods and put/get the parameters via the test context in every instance:
public class Test {
/** Property Foo is set once per Suite */
protected String foo;
/** Property Foo is set once per Test */
protected String bar;
/**
* As this method is executed only once for all inheriting instances before the test suite starts this method puts
* any configuration/resources needed by test implementations into the test context.
*
* #param context test context for storing test conf data
*/
#BeforeSuite
public void beforeSuite(ITestContext context) {
context.setAttribute("foo", "I was set in #BeforeSuite");
}
/**
* As this method is executed only once for all inheriting instances before the test starts this method puts any
* configuration/resources needed by test implementations into the test context.
*
* #param context test context for storing test conf data
*/
#BeforeTest(alwaysRun = true)
public void beforeTest(ITestContext context) {
context.setAttribute("bar", "I was set in #BeforeTest");
}
/**
* This method is run before the first method of a test instance is started and gets all required configuration from
* the test context.
*
* #param context test context to retrieve conf data from.
*/
#BeforeClass
public void beforeClass(ITestContext context) {
foo = (String) context.getAttribute("foo");
bar = (String) context.getAttribute("bar");
}
}
This solution works even if the #BeforeSuite/Test/Class methods are in a superclass of the actual test implementation.

Answer 3

If you are delegating the login on Spring Security and your backend does not store state (means that only authorizes isolated requests) then you do not need to test it. This means that you can disable authentication (cookie obtaining) in your tests. This way you decouple the test itself from the authorization.
But if you do not want to do this. And If you organise your tests in suites you can set a private member. The cookie will be the header auth in the response.
#TestSuite
public void mySuite {
private String cookie;
#BeforeSuite public void login() {
// Obtain cookie
this.cookie = cookie;
}
////// Rest of suite
Another way to look at it is to execute login as a part of your test.
I do not know any other way more elegant of do it.