I had a scenario that requires several fields to be unique, and I wanted to have a web test for this scenario. I had the problem of generating these unique parameters to be unique
The first naïve solution I used is to create these unique values using excel and then saving in csv file. Then in my scenario, I set the parameter to a data source from this csv file. But this required me every time I run the scenario to remove the values that are used
Second trial for me, I converted the recorded web test to a coded test, this allowed me to to change the parameters programmatically and also gave me lots of flexibility on the test, on the other hand I lost the usability and flexibility of the web test designer, where I can record more to these test, extract parameters easily, etc..
In the coded test, I was looking for the request that has the parameters that needs to be unique, then I created a function to create a 10 digits random number and returns this as string, like below
public string generateRandomId()
{
Random rand = new Random();
string[] random = new string[10];
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
random[i] = rand.Next(0, 9).ToString();
}
return string.Join("",random);
}
Then at the request parameter setting, I changed from
request8Body.FormPostParameters.Add("Form1:referenceNumberText", "12341212323");
to
request8Body.FormPostParameters.Add("Form1:referenceNumberText", generateRandomId());
Third trial which is the best as believe, I created a web test plugin to set a context parameter at the beginning of the test
First I created a context parameter, by doing right click on the web test, then selecting Add Context Parameter
Then I renamed this parameter to RandomText
Then following the instructions here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms243191(v=vs.80).aspx I created a new project in my solution, and added a new class, called it WebTestPlugin.cs
Added reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework and added the following line at the top
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting;
Then Changed the class name and inherited from WebTestPlugin, the code looked like below
public class webTestPlugin : WebTestPlugin
{
string randomTxt;
public override void PreWebTest(object sender, PreWebTestEventArgs e)
{
randomTxt = generateRandomId();
e.WebTest.Context["RandomText"] = randomTxt;
base.PreWebTest(sender, e);
}
public string generateRandomId()
{
Random rand = new Random();
string[] random = new string[10];
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
random[i] = rand.Next(0, 9).ToString();
}
return string.Join("",random);
}
}
Then I went to my web test project, added a reference to my plugin project
Then added the plugin to my web test
by doing the above, I had the flexibility of web test designer, and the flexibility of writing my own code in the web test
