What is the right way to compare two strings in SoapUI with groovy script assertion?

Question

I need to compare two strings in SoapUI. The first one is from a text file stored in my local directory, and the second one is from an XML response I get from a REST API operation. Before comparing the two strings, I use some methods on them to remove the header because they contain information like Dates and Processing Time which is sure to be different each time.

Below is what I've tried.

def xml = messageExchange.responseContentAsXml
String fileData = new File("C://Users/362784/project/outputPGB123.txt").text

String responseContent = new XmlSlurper().parseText(xml)

String fileDataFiltered = fileData.substring(fileData.indexOf("PASSED :"))
String responseContentFiltered = responseContent.substring(responseContent.indexOf("PASSED :"))

log.info(fileDataFiltered)
log.info(responseContentFiltered)

assert fileDataFiltered == responseContentFiltered

Here is the error I received

SoapUI error message

and my two identical log.info

log.info

Here's what the XML response looks like

I am new to SoapUI and I'm not sure what those two are actually comparing but I've checked the log.info of them on https://www.diffchecker.com/diff and the contents are identical. However, this assertion returns an error.

Can anyone point out what I did wrong and how do I get the result as passed?

If you want to have more solid debug info, don't log the strings, but use `.dump()`. E.g. `log.info(fileDataFiltered.dump())`. It will show you for strings the bytes and if you are not ending up with strings this could make it more obvious. — cfrick, Jun 25 '20 at 09:36
Then how do the two dumps compare? It wont help much unless you compare the two. — cfrick, Jun 25 '20 at 09:58
Those INFO are the dumps from the two variable. The only difference I see is after String@ and the hash= . And the second string has negative (-) hash. I'm not sure what to do with this information — catreedle, Jun 25 '20 at 10:16

ou_ryperd · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-25T11:31:03.460

In Java/Groovy you compare string values for equality like this:

assert fileDataFiltered.equals(responseContentFiltered)

See if that solves your problem.

The == comparator could, for example, compare object instances which could fail even if the text values are identical. See here for a more in-depth explanation.

EDIT:

Having seen your sample, it looks like the value you are comparing is inside XML character data (CDATA).

Consider the following example from here:

Some XML:

def response = '''<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" 
   xmlns:sam="http://www.example.org/sample/">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <sam:searchResponse>
         <sam:searchResponse>
            <item><id>1234</id><description><![CDATA[<item><width>123</width><height>345</height><length>098</length><isle>A34</isle></item>]]></description><price>123</price>
            </item>
         </sam:searchResponse>
      </sam:searchResponse>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
'''

Then access the CDATA node with XmlSlurper:

def Envelope = new XmlSlurper().parseText(response)
def cdata = Envelope.Body.searchResponse.searchResponse.item.description
log.info cdata
log.info cdata.getClass()
assert cdata instanceof groovy.util.slurpersupport.NodeChildren

As you can see, the value returned is of object NodeChildren. You can convert it to a string with:

log.info cdata.toString()
log.info cdata.toString().getClass()

So let's do a comparison (as per cfrick's comment, you can use == or .equals())

def expectedCdata = '<item><width>123</width><height>345</height>length>098</length><isle>A34</isle></item>'

if (cdata.toString().equals(expectedCdata)) { log.info 'Equal' }
else {log.info 'Different'}

It still fails ???

Well, that is because of a residual newline that isn't obvious from printing with log.info, if you remove whitespace it works in this case:

if (cdata.toString().replaceAll("\\s","").equals(expectedCdata)) { log.info 'Equal' }
else {log.info 'Different'}

As you can see, there are many levels of possible failure. You have to work through it.

In groovy `==` uses it's own semantics that in the end use `equals`. If you want to compare by identity, you have to do so explicitly. Unless SOAUI breaks this promise, this should make no difference. — cfrick, Jun 25 '20 at 09:27
I tried that but it gave the same error.. Could it be because the string characters are too long? Are there any other options than comparing them as string? — catreedle, Jun 25 '20 at 09:28
@catreedle can you add a snippet of the XML to your question ? Sanitize confidential info. — ou_ryperd, Jun 25 '20 at 09:32
There are AFAIK only some lower limits for string literals. Strings can grow quite big - so it's unlikely you hit a limit there. It's way more likely you are comparing apples with oranges (String and not-String) or you compare strings, that look similar but arent (e.g. whitespace) or even just a mismatch in encodings etc. — cfrick, Jun 25 '20 at 09:38
I updated my answer (after seeing your data) with an example that I hope will help. — ou_ryperd, Jun 25 '20 at 11:11
just adding replaceAll("\\s","") to both side of the assertion solves my problem! Thanks a lot for the elaborate answer as it helps me understanding the subject! — catreedle, Jun 25 '20 at 13:57

What is the right way to compare two strings in SoapUI with groovy script assertion?

1 Answers1