Overview:
If we use testNG framework, it could be difficult to maintain the testNG suite xml for a huge project where we have thousands of test cases. For such projects, it is convenient to maintain the tests in a spreadsheet & create the testNG suite xml from the spreadsheet.
In this article, let’s see how we could create the testNG suite XML file at run time!
Sample Spreadsheet:
Lets assume, I keep all my test cases in a spreadsheet as shown here.
- Description column is used to provide high level description of the test. It is used as the value of the name tag in testNG suite xml.
- There is an Active indicator to run only Active (marked as ‘Y’) test cases. We might not want to run all.
- There is a Module column to group the tests. For ex: All tests related to Order module should be executed.
- ClassName column shows the list of classes (comma separated) to be executed as part of the test.
- Data column (you could add more coulmns for data) is used to pass the data as the parameter to the test in the testNG suite XML.
I would want to query the above spreadsheet to get the specific tests. For example, If I need to execute all the active and order module tests, I would be using SQL as shown here.
Select * from TestCase where Active = 'Y' and Module = 'Order';
Fillo:
To query the spreadsheet, I have been using Fillo for the past few years. It is just a Java API to query xls, xlsx files. The advantage of using Fillo here is, it treats your spreadsheet as a database and each sheet as a table of the database.
Check here for the maven dependency and some sample code to use the library.
Suite Object Implementation:
First lets create a class diagram for the testNG suite xml. We could expect the testNG suite xml in the below format
<suite name="suite-name">
<test name="test-name">
<parameter name="param-name" value="param-value" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test1" />
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test2" />
</classes>
</test>
</suite>So, our class hierarchy will be as shown here.
suite (name) test (name) parameter (name, value) classes class (name)
For the above model, test, class, parameter could be Lists.
I add the below mvn dependencies in my java project.
<dependency>
<groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>
<artifactId>jackson-dataformat-xml</artifactId>
<version>2.9.0.pr4</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.codoid.products</groupId>
<artifactId>fillo</artifactId>
<version>1.15</version>
</dependency>I create a Suite.java to represent the above class hierarchy – I would create an instance of this class by reading the spreadsheet, so that I could export this as a testNG xml.
@JacksonXmlRootElement(localName = "suite")
public class Suite {
@JacksonXmlProperty(isAttribute = true)
private String name;
@JacksonXmlProperty(localName = "test")
@JacksonXmlElementWrapper(useWrapping = false)
private List < Test > tests;
public Suite(String name) {
this.name = name;
this.tests = new ArrayList < Suite.Test > ();
}
public void addTest(String testname, String paramName, String paramValue, String className) {
Test test = new Test(testname);
test.addParam(paramName, paramValue);
Pattern.compile(",").splitAsStream(className).forEach(test::addClass);
this.tests.add(test);
}
class Test {
@JacksonXmlProperty(isAttribute = true)
private String name;
@JacksonXmlProperty(localName = "parameter")
private Parameter param;
@JacksonXmlProperty(localName = "classes")
private Classes klasses;
public Test(String name) {
this.name = name;
klasses = new Classes();
}
public void addParam(String name, String value) {
param = new Parameter(name, value);
}
public void addClass(String name) {
klasses.assClasses(name);
}
}
class Parameter {
@JacksonXmlProperty(isAttribute = true)
private String name;
@JacksonXmlProperty(isAttribute = true)
private String value;
public Parameter(String name, String value) {
this.name = name;
this.value = value;
}
}
class Classes {
@JacksonXmlProperty(localName = "class")
@JacksonXmlElementWrapper(useWrapping = false)
private List < Class > classes;
public Classes() {
this.classes = new ArrayList < Suite.Class > ();
}
public void assClasses(String name) {
this.classes.add(new Class(name));
}
}
class Class {
@JacksonXmlProperty(isAttribute = true)
private String name;
Class(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
}XLS Reader:
I create a sample XLS reader as shown here using Fillo. I query the spreadsheet and then create the xml.
public class XLSReader {
private final Fillo fillo;
private final String filePath;
private Connection connection;
public XLSReader(String filePath) {
fillo = new Fillo();
this.filePath = filePath;
}
public void getTests(String query) {
try {
connection = fillo.getConnection(this.filePath);
Recordset recordset = connection.executeQuery(query);
this.createSuite(recordset);
} catch (FilloException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
connection.close();
}
}
private void createSuite(Recordset recordset) {
XmlMapper xmlMapper = new XmlMapper();
Suite suite = new Suite("TesTautomationGuru");
try {
while (recordset.next()) {
String testName = recordset.getField("TestCaseDescription");
String className = recordset.getField("ClassName");
String param = "Data";
String paramValue = recordset.getField("Data");
suite.addTest(testName, param, paramValue, className);
}
xmlMapper.writeValue(new File("c:/testng-suite.xml"), suite);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
recordset.close();
}
}
}TestNG Suite XML:
Simply executing specific query will fetch corresponding tests and create a testng xml at run time as shown here.
XLSReader suite = new XLSReader("tests.xls");
suite.getTests("select * from TestCase where module='Order'");testng xml output:
<suite name="TesTautomationGuru">
<test name="Testcase Description 1">
<parameter name="Data" value="data1" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test1" />
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test2" />
</classes>
</test>
<test name="Testcase Description 2">
<parameter name="Data" value="data2" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test3" />
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test4" />
</classes>
</test>
<test name="Testcase Description 3">
<parameter name="Data" value="data3" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test5" />
</classes>
</test>
<test name="Testcase Description 4">
<parameter name="Data" value="data4" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test6" />
</classes>
</test>
<test name="Testcase Description 5">
<parameter name="Data" value="data5" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test7" />
</classes>
</test>
<test name="Testcase Description 6">
<parameter name="Data" value="data6" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test8" />
</classes>
</test>
<test name="Testcase Description 7">
<parameter name="Data" value="data7" />
<classes>
<class name="com.testautomationguru.test.Test9" />
</classes>
</test>
</suite>Summary:
Above approach for creating testNG suite xml at run time saves a lot of time in maintaining the suite file for big projects where we could have thousands of test cases. We maintain all the tests in a spreadsheet and simply tag the module names to logically group the tests. So that I could use SQL to filter specific tests I need to execute.
Happy Testing & Subscribe 🙂
