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M1ke's avatar
M1ke
Occasional Contributor
9 years ago
Solved

learning how to Mock a service

hi guys,   As the title suggest, I'm trying to learn how to mock a service. And as a result, I am reading this tutorial on mocking a service.   Now, in the spirit of making sure I understand ever...
  • rupert_anderson's avatar
    rupert_anderson
    9 years ago

    Hi,

     

    I think they have made a mistake in their terminology in step 4. (that I think you are referring to) - They should say 'you should get one operation (ConversionRate) and one Response (Response 1) - not 'one request', as mocks don't make requests in SoapUI , they receive them and make responses (sometimes they may make custom requests in SoapUI using Groovy scripting).

     

    Does this make more sense?

     

    Regards,

    Rup 

rupert_anderson's avatar
rupert_anderson
Valued Contributor

Hi Michael,

 

You're welcome, I like helping where I can, it can also help me think of new potential blog topics or enhancements for areas where people might value help.

 

Whilst I ended up liking SoapUI, I must confess that I didn't find it intuitive or easy to figure out when I first tried to use it, so I think you aren't alone! :-)

 

I would say this forum is the best place for questions like this - there are some nice topics / answers in here. Some people also use stack overflow, but I don't contribute there for SoapUI stuff.

 

The practical answer to your question may soon present itself the further you go. One typical use of mocks in SoapUI is to despatch different responses based on the request e.g. mocking an error response based on certain request properties. Having the ability to add a range of responses allows people to easily add responses with different content. Take a look at the response (double click it) in your mock:

 

Notice the dispatch type options and default response, these give useful ways to tell the mock which response to pick. The most powerful is the script type - we can cover that if you need it!

 

Thanks for asking about my book. Whilst it is designed for intermediate SoapUI people, I tried to make most of the recipes complete worked examples, so I don't think you would have a problem making use of it. Its meant to complement the SoapUI wiki really, would love to know any feedback. Chapter 3 covers mocks. 

 

Regards,

Rup

 

 

M1ke's avatar
M1ke
Occasional Contributor
9 years ago

Hi Rupert,

 

Again thanks for the detailed response. Much appreciated.

 

Another question. In Step 4, line 4. It stated "As you can see the MockService returned the values we entered earlier as the response".

 

I was expecting a GUI window or something to display the value I entered in the previous step. Instead, the response window came up with the xml script that was generated + the value I entered.

 

Is this what happens when you get a response using SOAP UI? You basically get the XML response, just like your application would, if you were making a call to the service?

 

Kind regards,

Michael

  • M1ke's avatar
    M1ke
    Occasional Contributor
    9 years ago

    Ah! I believe thats how it works.

     

    Just stopped the mock service and tried submit the request again. And nothing came back.

  • rupert_anderson's avatar
    rupert_anderson
    Valued Contributor
    9 years ago

    Hi Michael,

     

    No problem.

     

    Ok, so in step 3.4 you customize the generated response (replace the ?), then in part 5.4 they show what happens when you use SoapUI to make a request to the mock i.e. it returns your response.

     

    Yes, thats maybe the simplest form of mocking. As previously mentioned, with different despatch options, a SoapUI mock can be made to return pretty much any kind of response!

     

    Regards,

    Rup

    • M1ke's avatar
      M1ke
      Occasional Contributor
      9 years ago

      Hi Rupert,

       

      Thanks again for the response.

       

      Another question:

       

      The XML response that got generated automatically. Where does it come from? And how does SOAP UI know what tags is needed for the response?

       

      Same goes for the request (step 4.4). And when it says it changes the endpoint automatically. That means, internally, the request is been pointed to the endpoint of the mock service - to invoke the response.

       

      Overall, my aim is to develop a mock service that behaves like an actual services that exists. This service has a number of methods it understands. I need to simulate all these methods, with thier corresponding outputs.

       

      Now, I have a service in Visual Studio that will query this mock service. Since I'm expecting a number of different responses, I now know it means I will have multiple responses.

       

      Question is, how do I tell SOAP UI to look out for certain requests and give the corresponding responses?

       

      In addition to the questions above, I was able to find a SOAP UI project a colleague worked on (who I have no contact with anymore). In his mockservice, there is no operation (and no response), but he made use of the 'OnRequest Script' - which is described as "a groovy script to run when receiving a request before it is dispatched".

       

      This contradicts the tutorial. How does it fit in? Can one really make use of the OnRequest script to generate the required XML response?

       

      If there is any additional reading material you feel I should read, please feel free to advise. Asides from your book ofcourse.

       

      Your response, as always, is appreciated.

       

      Kind regards,

      Michael

      • rupert_anderson's avatar
        rupert_anderson
        Valued Contributor
        9 years ago

        Hi Michael,

         

        I think SoapUI just uses your WSDL (which defines your service) to know exactly how to generate the sample request (for TestSteps) and response for your mock. Whereas in the case of REST mocks, no sample response is generated.

         

        In terms of your intended mock behaviour, you'll have to describe exactly how you expect your service/mock to behave before I can give more detailed advice. For example, as I mentioned before, the basic idea for conditional mocks is to base the choice of response or the content of the response on vales taken from the request.

         

        The OnRequest script is related to the (Groovy) Script option that I mentioned before. It doesn't really contradict the tutorial, it builds on the basic concepts, but uses Groovy to for example chose responses based on the request data or create responses from scratch in place of the generated one that you saw.

         

        In terms of doing the Script type responses, if you're new to SoapUI, you may have some homework to do depending on your experience of coding etc. There should be posts in this forum related to this, I have seen them before. It really depends on exactly what you want to do, there may be a simple way to do it using the standard dispatch choices.

         

        Kind regards,

        Rup