simple scripting in a Mock Service - no longer works

[jamescollett]

I have a problem with Mock Service scripting. It used to work. Now it doesn't.

In a previous project (about a year ago) I used simple scripting in a soapUI Mock Service.

I had several responses defined for a method. For one of my tests, I wanted to ensure that a subset of the responses would be returned in a specific sequence when the method was called repeatedly by the client piece. There was nothing fancy about this - no conditional programming, just a specification of which named responses I wanted to be sent back to the client.

I have had to re-visit this project to fix a small bug and I wanted to do a similar test. However the scripting no longer works.

Effectively I have the following responses in the Mock Responses panel of my Login method:-

Login_Response_OKAY_1
Login_Response_OKAY_2
Login_Response_OKAY_3
Login_Response_OKAY_4
Login_Response_ERROR

In the Dispatch dropdown list I have "SCRIPT" selected. In the Default Response dropdown list I have "Login_Response_ERROR" selected. In the panel below this I have the following script:-

return "Login_Response_OKAY_2"
return "Login_Response_OKAY_1"
return "Login_Response_OKAY_3"
return "Login_Response_OKAY_4"

In this test I did not want the fifth variant of the response (the error case) sent back. This used to work a treat.
I used to get the responses in the order as written, and then they would repeat - i.e. 2, 1, 3, 4, 2, 1, 3, 4 etc).

Now I just get the first response in the list, namely Login_Response_OKAY_2, repeatedly.

I am using soapUI 5.0.0 and I have Groovy specified as the scripting language (I think this is the default).

The only difference I can think of between now and a year ago is that I was probably using an earlier version of soapUI.

Can someone suggest what is wrong and how to cure this?

Thanks.

[jamescollett]

---

@AlbertCiffone wrote:

It works correctly for me. Check that the string that you're returning correspond to the response names... you use "Login_Response_OKAY_1" as name instead of "Response 1"... In my example I use this names but check that you're using the correct ones for your case.

...
myRespList = ["Login_Response_OKAY_1","Login_Response_OKAY_2"]  
...

If you return a string that not exist as a name it executes the default option.

---

Thanks, Albert. The names have changed across different projects and iterations, and my post is meant to convey simply an example of what is happening. But yes, I have made sure in each case that the name I quote matches the name of a Response.

I tried renaming the Responses to have an underscore character instead of a space character. In the old days, putting a space in a filename was a sackable offence (joke) because it generated problems on the file system. But this did not change a thing.

I remain clueless as to what foolish error I have made.

[jamescollett · Accepted solution]

I have found a solution. I have moved on to a new SoapUI project (a SOAP project, this time, not REST) and just for the sake of punishing myself I tried again to construct a custom sequence. I have taken bits of a coupe of the kind responses and amended them based on my observations and have come up with the following.

I realised that the script log was showing the values of my list items with the square brackets around them. It occurred to me that a statement like this:-

 myRespList = ["Response_2","Response_1"]  

- must do a bit more than just insert the two strings "Response_2" and "Response_1" to a list; it must be adding the square brackets around the words first. No idea why.

I re-named my methods to include the square brackets and suddenly the thing is working.

Here are the details:-

My Responses in the method are as follows:-

[Response_Template]

[Response_1]

[Response_2]

My code (heaviliy influenced by previous contributors) is as follows.

// get the list from the context
def myRespList = context.myRespList

// if list is null or empty reinitalize it
if (!myRespList || !myRespList?.size)
{   
    log.info "--> Refreshing the list"
    // list in the desired output order
    myRespList = ["Response_2","Response_1"]  
}

// take the first element from the list
def myResp = myRespList.take(1)

// update the context with the list without this element
context.myRespList = myRespList.drop(1)

// return the response
log.info "--> Response is: " + myResp
return myResp;

The output in the script is like this:-

• Fri Oct 09 18:34:47 BST 2015:INFO:--> Refreshing the list
• Fri Oct 09 18:34:47 BST 2015:INFO:--> Response is: [Response_2]
• Fri Oct 09 18:34:50 BST 2015:INFO:--> Response is: [Response_1]
• Fri Oct 09 18:34:51 BST 2015:INFO:--> Refreshing the list
• Fri Oct 09 18:34:51 BST 2015:INFO:--> Response is: [Response_2]
• Fri Oct 09 18:34:51 BST 2015:INFO:--> Response is: [Response_1]
• Fri Oct 09 18:34:52 BST 2015:INFO:--> Refreshing the list
• Fri Oct 09 18:34:52 BST 2015:INFO:--> Response is: [Response_2]

The SOAP XML Responses from the mock service are swicthing betwen Response_2 and Response_1 as desired.

[rupert_anderson]

Well done James, glad you managed to work that through!

Wll done on sharing back your solution too! 🙂

Cheers,

Rupert