Adding equal verification points

Equal verification points enable you to check that the contents returned by a service match exactly the contents specified in the verification point.

About this task

When you add verification points, the results from a service response are compared with the expected data specified in the verification point test element. Equal or contain verification points enable you to directly compare the XML document that the service returns.
  • Contain verification points return a Pass status when the response XML document contains the expected XML data.
  • Equal verification points return a Pass status when the response XML document matches exactly the expected XML data.

Complex service requests or verification points might have empty XML elements that are not needed in a test script. When playing back the test, you can skip such empty XML elements. In Window > Preferences > Test > Test editor > Service test ensure that the Display the 'Skip if empty' column in XML tree viewer check box is selected. This option displays a Skip if empty column in the tree view of the request. You can then choose the XML elements to skip.

Procedure

  1. Open the test editor, and right click a response element and select Add > Equal Verification Point.
  2. Select the verification point, and in the Test Element Details area of the test editor, type a name for the verification point.
  3. Select the verification options:
    • Select Test using XML namespaces to perform the verification on the qualified structure of the XML document, including the namespace tagging, instead of the simple name. Disable this option to check only the simple name of the element and the final return value.
    • Select Text XML text nodes to include the content of text elements in the verification.
    • Select Text XML attributes to include the content of attributes in the verification.
  4. On the Message page, select the Form, Tree, or Source view to specify the expected XML data.

    For an equal verification point, the expected XML data contains the XML document from the response test element. If necessary, you can edit the expected XML data.

    You can specify standard Java™ regular expressions in the Tree view. To do this, select the Regular expression column on the line of an attribute or text value and type the regular expression in the Value column. For example, the following regular expression checks for a correctly formatted email address: /^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/

    When using regular expressions, the number of XML nodes or XML fragments in the verification point must match the quantity of expected nodes.

What to do next

You can enable or disable each verification point by right-clicking the verification point in the test editor and clicking Enable or Disable.