Ask a Question

How extract html string from json response.

SOLVED
yu
Occasional Contributor

How extract html string from json response.

Hi all! Would you be so kind and help with this -

response from server is this in Json format: 

{
"Success": true,
"Message": "OK",
"Result": "\r\n<div class=\"row contact table-row\" data-id=\"551215\" data-disabled=\"False\" data-keydisabled=\"False\">\r\n <input id=\"returnCompanyId\" name=\"returnCompanyId\" type=\"hidden\" ... 
"Title": ""
}

I used Transfer and have string in TestCase property 

 <div class="row contact table-row" data-id="551215" data-disabled="False" data-keydisabled="False"> <input id="returnCompanyId" name="returnCompanyId" type="hidden" value="374982" /> <div class="icon-cell col-md-1-half table-cell">  ....

 

 Is it possble to parse dinamic value of  data-id with groovy script? 

 

 Can anybody help how to parse this value?  Thank you! 

 

 

9 REPLIES 9
richie
Community Hero

Hi,

 

I'm sorry - I'm kind of lost by your description - could you provide a littel more info please?

 

What I got from your post is that you have a json response and 'Result' attribute value is actually an escaped html string.  The attribute value contains a data-id attribute within the div element with a value of '551215'.  You're using a property transfer to transfer the value of '551215' to a testcase level property - is that right?

 

Are you saying that when you try the property transfer - the value being written to the testcase property is not '551215' but '55125'? is that right?  cos that value isn't even being truncated - it's a totally different value.  Or are you saying you already have a value written to the testcase property?

 

As I say - I'm a little lost from your description - someone cleverer than me might understand - but I'd need a bit more info to get exactly where you're coming from

 

Cheers!

 

rich

if this helped answer the post, could you please mark it as 'solved'? Also if you consider whether the title of your post is relevant? Perhaps if the post is solved, it might make sense to update the Subject header field of the post to something more descriptive? This will help people when searching for problems. Ta
yu
Occasional Contributor

 

 How is possble to parse a value from data-id attribute only? And write this value in property. 

The value of data-id attribute is differenet for every response. 

richie
Community Hero

Hi @yu

 

I can see that you responded to my post with a response laying out the problem - but for some reason - I cannot see your response when viewing the web page itself - I can only see your response in my hotmail account?!?!? (did you delete your post after submitting?)

 

Anyway - you explained - you are trying to extract the data-id attribute value (that is dynamic) from the response - the trouble being the 'data-id' attribute is actually within an escaped html string within your json.  This is a similar issue to what I've had - extracting CDATA values from within XML.  There's a OOB option to handling CDATA  where you pass a property to another property to extract the data you need - I tried tailoring that option - but I'd forgotten that I need to use saxon parser to do this.

 

I need to use the saxon parse but the json option - I'm looking at this now to see if I can get it to work

 

The other option is groovy - I tried putting the required groovy together quickly based on the help other people have given me before now (e.g. @msiadak,@Lucian etc.) but I was getting compilation errors - so I think I'm gonna leave the groovy to the experts!

 

It might take me til tomorrow before I get the saxon parse working for the json - so for now - the groovy is probably quicker for someone else to knock out

 

Cheers

 

richie

if this helped answer the post, could you please mark it as 'solved'? Also if you consider whether the title of your post is relevant? Perhaps if the post is solved, it might make sense to update the Subject header field of the post to something more descriptive? This will help people when searching for problems. Ta
yu
Occasional Contributor

 

 Is it possble to parse a  dinamic value from data-id attribute with groovy script? 

The value of data-id attribute is differenet for every response.  I need use it  in property for another POST. 

 

Kind regards, 

@yu

richie
Community Hero

yep - right - I can totally see what you need.

 

I did a bit of investigation related to the CDATA approach (using saxon parser - see link) and I initially thought that I'd need the json version.

 

however - once the string '<div class="row contact table-row" data-id="551215" data-disabled="False" data-keydisabled="False"><input id="returnCompanyId" name="returnCompanyId" type="hidden">' gets written to the property - I'm guessing you need the html saxon parser instead considering it's html (although I dont know why the xml version wouldn't handle this particular instance just as well).

 

I've spent the last 30mins trying to get this to work and I'm failing at the moment - If I can't get it to work - I'm going to go back to my CDATA project and see how I handled it - but this is going to take me a while cos that project  has been archived off - so my response is not going to be today I'm afraid - hopefully someone else can give you the groovy alternative sooner.

 

Cheers,

 

richie

if this helped answer the post, could you please mark it as 'solved'? Also if you consider whether the title of your post is relevant? Perhaps if the post is solved, it might make sense to update the Subject header field of the post to something more descriptive? This will help people when searching for problems. Ta
richie
Community Hero

Ok - it's took me a while but I've got it working using XPATH (like the CDATA handling passing the content from one property to another) - but there is a problem with the content.

 

you have a value of &nbps; in your content that the parser doesn't like - once I'd removed this - I got it working with the embedded functionality and I used an event handler to replace the '&nbps;' char anyway.

 

Just so you can follow what I did - I created a VIRT that would return your response

 

Yutestcase.PNG

 

 

I ran the request and did a property transfer of the Result object, passing the contents of the Result object (html string) to a property (see next image)

 

Yutransfer1.PNG

 

I then did a transfer of the html string (in the Properties step) to a second Property, but specifying the data-id tag attribute (see next image)

Yutransfer2.PNG

 

as you can see - the data-id attribute value was successfully picked up in the transfer (THERE IS A PROBLEM HERE - and I'll come back to it) - for completeness the next image is the Properties step - here you can see the 2 properties that were extracted successfully

YuProperties.PNG

 

 

So - all looks ok - right?  Well there is a problem using XPATH to extract the html attribute value you need.  There is an undeclared xml entity (not one of the standard 5) within your content - the value is '&nbsp;' within the html string that will cause a problem for the parser.

 

If you search your response you can find it - the above approach will fail BECAUSE the content includes this.  I cheated inasmuch that I initially manually replaced the '&nbsp;' char encode with '&amp;' once the string had been transferred (after the first transfer).  There is a way around this (by using an event handler to replace this '&nbsp;' with ANYTHING that is standard xml) - however - it depends how important the content is in your tests before you start thinking about altering the response using an event handler.

 

SO - if you don't replace the '&nbsp;', the testcase will fail on the property transfer step.  If you replace the '&nbsp;' with something that doesn't need declaring (like '&amp;') the test case will run through executing successfully (extracting the values into the Properties step for later use)

 

As I state above - to get it to run successfully without any manual intervention - I used the 'RequestFilter.afterRequest event handler.  The code for the event handler was as follows:

 

def content = context.httpResponse.responseContent
content = content.replaceAll( "&nbsp;", "&amp;" ) // this replaces the nonbreakspace char for the ampersand code which doesnt need to be declared in xml

log.info( content )

context.httpResponse.responseContent = content

So - this works completely automatically once I'd added in that event handler.  its not pretty and some of the other lads may have some whizzy way of using a groovy step in the test case to do all the work for you (but I can't help with that) - but if there's no problem replacing the nonbreakspace entity - the above will get you where you need to (i.e. extracting attributes from the html string)

 

Hope this helps!

 

Cheers,

 

richie

 

 

 

 

\zx

asas

if this helped answer the post, could you please mark it as 'solved'? Also if you consider whether the title of your post is relevant? Perhaps if the post is solved, it might make sense to update the Subject header field of the post to something more descriptive? This will help people when searching for problems. Ta
yu
Occasional Contributor

Hi Richie, 

thank you a lot for you help! 

I used your solution and it works! it's wonderful! 

I don't know what is  'RequestFilter.afterRequest event handler. 

And did this solution in longer way but with the same logic as you discribed .

Might it can be helpful for somebody:

1)  Save Json request in Property1 using PropertyTransfer.

2) Then in  Groovy script invoked this property and replace  &nbps with '&amp; as you discrabed. 

and set this XML in an another Property with Groovy

 Code is : 

import com.eviware.soapui.support.types.StringToStringMap
def result = testRunner.testCase.testSuite.getPropertyValue("TempTarget")
result = result.replaceAll( "&nbsp;", "&amp;")
testRunner.testCase.testSuite.setPropertyValue("Extracted", result);
log.info(result);

 

3) Use Property Transfer  and take  valie //div//@data-id from saved XML

 

Best regards!

richie
Community Hero

Hey @yu

Kudos for using the groovy option.....you've taught me something new! 🙂

Is it possible as the author of the original post to alter the title of the post to include the text "extract html string from json response"?

You've marked this as "solved" and im just thinking it might help people who are searching for similar problems on the forum....???

Cheers,

richie
if this helped answer the post, could you please mark it as 'solved'? Also if you consider whether the title of your post is relevant? Perhaps if the post is solved, it might make sense to update the Subject header field of the post to something more descriptive? This will help people when searching for problems. Ta
yu
Occasional Contributor

Yep, the tittle was changed.

 

Best regards, 

yu

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: