Sorting multiple lists by a list item

I would appreciate some help on this!

Thanks in advance.
Armen

To help you I need some clarifications:

• Is this Groovy lists?


• If so, are the dates of datatype String or Date?

regards!

/Henrik
http://www.eviware.com

Dear Henrik,

Thank you for your assistance.

Yes they are groovy lists created like this:

a = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("block number")
b = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("code")
c = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("eventDateTime")
d = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("comment")
e = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("transmissionStatus")
f = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("transmissionVersion")

myList = [a,b,c,d,e,f]


I believe the date is a string just grabbed via XPath from the XML output - I may need to parse the date (or convert it to a date datatype) to compare it with the Database value properly - but for now its a string.


Maybe it is easier to drop the list coding entirely and to create and array where each pass of the loop stores the 6 values into a row of the array, and then to rearrange the rows that way?


Thanks again,
Armen

This should do the trick (the results go into sortedMasterArray):

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat

// Returns and removes the list with the lowest/earliest Date from myArray
def extractFirstOrdered( myArray )
{
    firstOrdered = null
    for( list in myArray )
    {
        if( firstOrdered == null || list[2] < firstOrdered[2] )
            firstOrdered = list
    }
    myArray.remove( firstOrdered )
    return firstOrdered
}

a = [1,4,"12MAR2011T14:33",4,6]
b = [3,2,"12MAR2011T14:20",4,6]
c = [2,7,"16JUN2011T14:42",4,6]
d = [5,1,"21MAR2011T18:20",4,6]
e = [6,5,"09MAR2011T14:20",4,6]

def masterArray = [a, b, c, d, e]

SimpleDateFormat dateParser = new SimpleDateFormat("ddMMMyyyy'T'HH:mm")

// Convert date strings to Date objects
for( list in masterArray )
{
    list[2] = dateParser.parse( list[2] )
}

// Sort masterArray
def sortedMasterArray = []
while( !masterArray.isEmpty() )
{
    sortedMasterArray.add( extractFirstOrdered( masterArray ) )
}

/Henrik
http://www.eviware.com

Dear Henrik,

Thank you very much for your code - it works very well - but I forgot to mention that the collection of the list happens one at a time via an incremental loop which collects the data on one pass then increments the XPath[] to collect the next block - so on every loop step we need to pass the list data into the array.



In our scenario we have created a loop which calls the property transfer to populate the list - so on each pass of the loop one list is created like so:

// loop the number of tag blocks - where r is the number of blocks which is determined by an XPath count (1-500 subtag blocks)
while( x < Integer.parseInt(r) ){
x++

// increment the block number to test each subtag block - this increments the Xpath [] to collect each block of data
testRunner.testCase.getTestStepByName('PropertiesXML').setPropertyValue("block number","${x}")

// Run the write to XML routine to write XML values to the properties file - this collects the data from the WS XML via XPath
testRunner.runTestStepByName("Write to XML")

// The Xpath values are stored in the properties file
a = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("block number")
b = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("code")
c = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("eventDateTime")
d = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("comment")
e = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("transmissionStatus")
f = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("transmissionVersion")

// The Xpath values are taken from the properties file to create a list
myList = [a,b,c,d,e,f]

// Add the myList to the Master array in block x
xxxxxxxxx


}


As you can see, on each pass of the loop I need to add the myList to an array - and since the number of list blocks is random (1-500 blocks) we have to create a dynamic array to account for the blocks - then we can collect all the block data before executing the sorting of the dates.


How can I add each myList loop step to the array in position x please?

Many thanks for your excellent help!

Armen

If I understand you correctly, you probably want to do something like this:

// loop the number of tag blocks - where r is the number of blocks which is determined by an XPath count (1-500 subtag blocks)
def masterArray = []
while( x < Integer.parseInt(r) ){
   x++

   // increment the block number to test each subtag block - this increments the Xpath [] to collect each block of data
   testRunner.testCase.getTestStepByName('PropertiesXML').setPropertyValue("block number","${x}")

   // Run the write to XML routine to write XML values to the properties file - this collects the data from the WS XML via XPath
   testRunner.runTestStepByName("Write to XML")

   // The Xpath values are stored in the properties file
   a = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("block number")
   b = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("code")
   c = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("eventDateTime")
   d = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("comment")
   e = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("transmissionStatus")
   f = testRunner.testCase.testSteps["PropertiesXML"].getPropertyValue("transmissionVersion")

   // The Xpath values are taken from the properties file to create a list
   def myList = [a,b,c,d,e,f]

   // Add the myList to the Master array in block x
   masterArray.add( myList )

}

Good luck!

/Henrik

Dear Henrik,

Perfect! Thank you very much for your assistance - that works really well.

Thanks for the great support!

Armen

Dear Henrik,

Thanks for your code - everything is working fine on the sort but now I have a situation where more than one array column needs to be sorted, first the date then another value. I dont understand the top section pasted below - it seems that this code only works with sorting one property. But I cannot re-use it again to sort something else. What confuses me is this code doesn't point to a specific array and rather its generic - I have a "masterArray" to arrange by date and then I have another column in another array called "dbArray" where I need to arrange by "ID number".

// Returns and removes the list with the lowest/earliest Date from myArray
def extractFirstOrdered( myArray )
{
    firstOrdered = null
    for( list in myArray )
    {
        if( firstOrdered == null || list[2] < firstOrdered[2] )
            firstOrdered = list
    }
    myArray.remove( firstOrdered )
    return firstOrdered
}

How can I make this code sort specific arrays by name rather than generically ?

Thanks again for your help.

Armen

Hi Armen,

The expression list[2] means "the element with index 2 in the array list", which is the date column in your first question (indexing of arrays start with 0 in most programming languages -- e.g. the third element has index 2). So

if (list[2] < firstOrdered[2]) 

means "if the date in list is smaller/earlier than the date in firstOrdered".

Changing the number two to something else would be a good start. You might even want to make it an argument to the function, something like this:

/*
 * Sorts the sub arrays in myArray based on comparison of the n:th element in the sub arrays.
 *
 * @param myArray The array which contains the sub arrays.
 * @param n The index of the element to sort the sub arrays by.
 */
def extractFirstOrdered( myArray, n )
{
    firstOrdered = null
    for( list in myArray )
    {
        if( firstOrdered == null || list[n] < firstOrdered[n] )
            firstOrdered = list
    }
    myArray.remove( firstOrdered )
    return firstOrdered
}

Dear Henrik,

Perfect! It works really good - and now I understand the code aswell.

Thank you again for your great assistance.

Best regards,
Armen