Forum Discussion

rajrao's avatar
rajrao
Occasional Contributor
3 years ago

Multiline string in readable format for mediatype application/json

Hi,   Our Rest API request has json body and one of the values is a  multiline String(XML), when I paste the json body in readyapi request editor and send, I get errors if the whole string is not i...
  • richie's avatar
    richie
    3 years ago
    Hey rajrao,

    I dont think there is. Ive come across this myself a while back and the problem was the endpoint's validation didnt like the split....it wasnt a ReadyAPI issue.

    Totally get what youre saying about the message pane window being tiny.....especially when exercising REST APIs (rather than say SOAP) where half the available screen is used up by the Request's API parms editable frame.

    When i had this issue i found 2 options (dunno if the other forum members have any better ideas?)

    You can either:

    1. Externalise your data in .csv's enabling you to edit payloads in Excel or whatever, OR
    2. There is a button with the alt-text help (immediately above the Smart Assertion button) "Toggles to tab based layout". This changes the view so rather than a vertical split in middle of screen splitting the request and response, it alters the view to show one in front of the other (extending the available screen space, doubling the visible horizontal width of the Request's payload input field.

    Those are the only 2 options i found that would help.

    Cheers,

    Rich
rajrao's avatar
rajrao
Occasional Contributor

Hey richie 

Thanks for the response, appreciate taking time to answer. Maybe I wasn't very clear in explaining what my problem was, apologies.

My Rest API request hasn't got any parameters. It is a 'json body' with key-value pairs, and one of the key-value is an 'XML' of type 'STRING' and this string xml is very big and would like to have it spread across multiple lines rather than one line. If the whole string is not in one line then I get a json validation error and the line breaks like '/n' doesn't help.

P.S: I have edited my original post now and also copied part of my request

 

richie's avatar
richie
Community Hero
3 years ago
Hey rajrao,

I did totally understand so i think we've both confused each other.

I was providing workarounds in case there was no way around your schema validation!😁

I did notice however that your newline break was incorrect. You tried '/n', right? Well in json a newline break is '\\n' instead.

Try '\\n' instead. If that isnt allowed by the validation then youll have to go with a workaround.

Cheers,

Rich
  • rajrao's avatar
    rajrao
    Occasional Contributor
    3 years ago

    Hi richie 

     

    Appreciate the response, thanks for the line break correction, it was a typo and in my actual I used the right one which didn't work.

    Sorry for the confusion, I now understood the solution you provided, infact option 1 of externalising the data is what I am working upon as well, in groovy script step I have saved the whole string as multiple line array and parameterised the xml element contents and then using join() method made it into one line and saved in a different variable, now I want to write this variable value into an external file and in the request step, want to provide the request body this external file as an attachment. Which may work in my opinion as you also suggested. Wondering if you have any groovy script to write this groovy variable which holds my combined string into an external text file ?

    • richie's avatar
      richie
      Community Hero
      3 years ago

      Hey rajrao 

       

      yep - I should be able to sort the groovy (despite how rubbish I am at i) - it'll take me about an hour (and it's gone 12pm so I'll do it tomorrow unless ChrisAdams gets there first - he'll knock it out in about 5mins).

      But regarding the groovy - why bother extracting to a file if you have it in a variable already?  Why not just park it into a Properties step for later use within the test?  Do you want to save the XML string for later use or some reason? If not - the Properties option is easier as it's just 2 lines of groovy..... (which even I can do without any difficulty!)

       

      Cheers,

       

      Rich

      • rajrao's avatar
        rajrao
        Occasional Contributor
        3 years ago

        Hi richie ,

         

        I have saved the string array in a variable and joined using 'join' method [def join1 = separate.join()], but this way it is saving the variable as a groovy string(obviously) and when I extract it into an external file using 'write' method [inputFile.write(join1)], it is still the same groovy string and when I pass this external file as an attachment in to rest request with media type 'application/json', I get "unable to parse json" exception and that is same even if I save the variable as a property and call the property in the request, so I think what would resolve the problem is if I could extract the whole string as a json string and any help in achieving this would be hugely appreciated.

         

        Below is my groovy:

         

        def separate = [
        '{',
        '"messageId" : "unigeID111",',
        ' "messageType" : "IA8",',
        '"message" :"<con:Control xmlns:con=\"http://www.abc/Trade/Common/ControlDocument\">',
        '<con:MetaData>',
        '<con:MessageId>WK033</con:MessageId>',

        </con:MetaData>',

        '<con:OperationRequest>',
        '<con:Parameters xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\">',

        <con:Parameter Name=\"message\">',
        '<![CDATA[<IA8 xmlns=\"urn:publicid:-:EC:DGTAXUD:EMCS:PHASE4:IA8:V3.01\" xmlns:tms=\"urn:publicid:-:EC:DGTAXUD:CS:PHASE4:TMS:V3.01\">',
        '<Header>',
        '<tms:MessageSender>NA.X</tms:MessageSender>',

        '</Header>',
        '<Body>',
        '<SubmittedDraft>',
        '<Attributes>',
        '<SubmissionMessageType>1</SubmissionMessageType>',

        '</Attributes>',

        '</SubmittedDraft>',
        '</Body>',
        '</IA8>]]>',
        '</con:Parameter>',
        ' </con:Parameters>',
        '<con:ReturnData><con:Data Name=\"schema\"/></con:ReturnData>',
        '</con:OperationRequest></con:Control>"',
        '}'
        ]

         

        def join1 = separate.join()

        def fileName = "abc.txt"
        def inputFile = new File("/home/Desktop/"+fileName)

        inputFile.write(join1)

         

        Thanks

        Raj