How to get user input in protractor tool

Question

Actually I want to get user input from user whoever runs the script. I do not want to hardcode the testdata path in the script. for example when I run a script to test angularjs using protractor and javascript. User should be able to give path of the testdata, so that I can use that variable inside the script.

Answer 1

You can do this by passing in a params.testData value from the command line.

protractor conf.js --params.testData=D:\path\to\testdata.xlsx

Then in your test you will reference it using the global browser.params object. You will also need to use fs to read the file and process the data. Honestly, it would probably be easier if you created a .json file for the test data instead of an .xlsx but it looks there are libraries out there to help you parse an xlsx document already if you have to stick with that. Check this answer for some examples.

This code will not work as is but the basic idea will be something like this:

before(() => {
  const testDataPath = browser.params.testData;

  fs.readFile(testDataPath, (err, data) => {
    if(err) { // fail? };

    const testData = data;

    // do some other stuff with test data ...
  });       
}

You are going to need to do some additional processing of the data from the .xlsx file to get it in the correct format but this should hopefully help get you on the right path.