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jonrey's avatar
jonrey
Occasional Contributor
9 years ago
Solved

Random Date Project Property

Hello all!   I'm hoping that somebody can help me with this request - I'm a complete novice at this type of coding.  I need to create a Project Property variable to randomize a date in my Soap Requ...
  • rupert_anderson's avatar
    rupert_anderson
    9 years ago

    Hi,

    You're welcome, happy to help! :-)

    I'm not sure, but think the 00:00:00 is the HH:MM:SS part of the XML DateTime datatype e.g.

     

    <startdate>2002-05-30T09:00:00</startdate>

    see http://www.w3schools.com/schema/schema_dtypes_date.asp

     

    Are you using a SOAP or XML request with that data type? If so, it will probably force your date to include the time portion.

     

    Cheers,

    Rup

  • rupert_anderson's avatar
    rupert_anderson
    9 years ago

    Hi,

     

    Don't worry, I'm happy to help and wondered if you might also want to know how to use the script inline as a property expansion, as its more of a mouthful than the first expression was!

     

    I think the short answer is (use semicolons to separate the statements when using inline):

     

    ${=def now = new Date().parse("yy-MM-dd", "14-06-01");now.month = 6 + new Random().nextInt(18);now.format("yy-MM-dd")}

     

    But, personally, especially for larger scripts I don't do this as it isn't very readable. Instead I would simply add a Groovy TestStep before your Test Request TestStep and then add the result to a property on the (TestCase) 'context' e.g.

     

    def now = new Date().parse("yy-MM-dd", "14-06-01")
    now.month = 6 + new Random().nextInt(18)
    context["randomDate"] = now.format("yy-MM-dd")

     

    Then in the Test Request TestStep, all you need to reference and insert the value is:

     

    ${=randomDate}

     

    (this method may serve you better in the future)

     

    Make sense?

     

    Cheers,

    Rup

jonrey's avatar
jonrey
Occasional Contributor

Hello Rupert,

 

Thank you very much for your well thought-out and impressive reply!

 

This is SO close!  The property expansion returns 2014-02-01T00:00:00 and I'm not sure where the extra "T00:00:00" part is coming from.  Certainly gets me much farther than I was - and helps me learn the syntax - so I'm going to play around with it some more to see if I can get it the last 5% :)

 

Cheers!

rupert_anderson's avatar
rupert_anderson
Valued Contributor
9 years ago

Hi,

You're welcome, happy to help! :-)

I'm not sure, but think the 00:00:00 is the HH:MM:SS part of the XML DateTime datatype e.g.

 

<startdate>2002-05-30T09:00:00</startdate>

see http://www.w3schools.com/schema/schema_dtypes_date.asp

 

Are you using a SOAP or XML request with that data type? If so, it will probably force your date to include the time portion.

 

Cheers,

Rup

  • rupert_anderson's avatar
    rupert_anderson
    Valued Contributor
    9 years ago

    PS If you're happy with the solution, please can you mark it as accepted if you get a chance so that others might follow it?

    Cheers,
    Rup

  • jonrey's avatar
    jonrey
    Occasional Contributor
    9 years ago

    Haha, I was actually coming back to the board to suggest this very thing.  I'm using a SOAP request and it certainly looks like XML DateTime.  So now I just need to figure out how to tell it to stop being smart and use it as a string.  

     

    I will gladly mark your previous response as the answer, as it is definitely correct (and informative!) for the request.  

    • rupert_anderson's avatar
      rupert_anderson
      Valued Contributor
      9 years ago

      Cool, thanks for accepting it! :-)

      One option to stop the datetime casting would be to use xs:string instead of the xs:datetime, assuming thats acceptable to your interface.

      Cheers,

      Rup

      • jonrey's avatar
        jonrey
        Occasional Contributor
        9 years ago

        Argh, I figured out the problem....  it is because only dates between 6/1/2014 and 12/1/2015 are valid >.<

         

        Now I have the syntax though, I will try to figure out  how to change the start date!