Service Virtualization

  • 1.  Constructing Dynamic Response for REST service with XML content

    Posted Apr 19, 2018 10:12 AM

    Hi,

     

    Need to know how to construct dynamic tags in response based on tags in request for REST service with XML contents.

     

    Sample request:

    <client>
    <Field>
    <FieldName>ClientID</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>123</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    <Field>
    <FieldName>Name</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>abcd</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    </client>

    <client>
    <Field>
    <FieldName>ClientID</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>456</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    <Field>
    <FieldName>Name</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>efgh</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    </client>


    Sample Response:
    <ClientData>
    <Field>
    <FieldName>EmployeeNumber</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>45698</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    </ClientData>
    <ClientData>
    <Field>
    <FieldName>EmployeeNumber</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>7896</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    </ClientData>

    The count of ClientData tag in response depends on count of client tag in request.

    How to dynamically construct the tags in response? Pls help.

     

    I believe Matchscript needs for this. If yes pls share me a sample script as I am new to it.



  • 2.  Re: Constructing Dynamic Response for REST service with XML content
    Best Answer

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Apr 19, 2018 01:45 PM

    As far as I understand, XML permits different ordering of tags, so your example is missing an attribute or element that determines what input block is matched to what response block. There are various approaches, depending on exactly what your requests and responses actually look like.

     

    The response might be something like:

    <ClientData>
    <Field>

    <clientID>123</clientID>
    <FieldName>EmployeeNumber</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>45698</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    </ClientData>
    <ClientData>
    <Field>

    <clientID>456</clientID>
    <FieldName>EmployeeNumber</FieldName>
    <FieldValue>7896</FieldValue>
    </Field>
    </ClientData>

    In this case, I might investigate An Approach for virtualizing optional repeating blocks 

     

    If you have a desire to make "better" XML than is provided by whatever automated process created the original XML ... by the way, I would talk to the development team, asking them to update the API, because would judge that the use of <fieldName> and <fieldValue> tags are counter-intuitive and APIs shouldn't be generated in this way ... What I have done in the past is create a scriptable DPH to change the XML to something like:

     

    Request:

    <client>
    <ClientID>123</ClientID>
    <Name>abcd</Name>
    </client>
    <client>
    <ClientID>456</ClientID>
    <Name>efgh</Name>
    </client>

     

    Response:

    <ClientData ClientID="123">
    <EmployeeNumber>45698</EmployeeNumber>
    </ClientData>
    <ClientData ClientID="456">
    <EmployeeNumber>7896</EmployeeNumber>
    </ClientData>

    These blocks lose nothing of the original data, in fact they keep response blocks related to request blocks by the addition of the "ClientID" attribute, they are much more readable, and they take less space.

     

    It could be that, if you implement a scriptable DPH to manipulate the XML to be "better", you find that the options are straightforward and you don't need to add the effort to virtualise the optional repeating blocks.

     

    Finally, the more effort you put into doing this in DevTest, the less likely you are to want to discard your carefully-crafted virtual service when there are new & different data scenarios. If your company uses CA Test Data Manager, that is the best place to do your repeating data management, ant it can output its data scenarios to your running virtual services, at the time when the tester requests his test data in TDM Portal, enabling really complex data scenarios on demand. This would mean that you don't bother about adding this level of block data management in DevTest.



  • 3.  Re: Constructing Dynamic Response for REST service with XML content

    Posted Apr 23, 2018 06:50 AM

    Thanks Rick , I will discuss with my developer on this.