Launchers

Postman (Newman) Launcher (postman.jar)

The Postman (newman) launcher allows interfacing with Postman collections.
The launchers allows to :
  • Recursively scan all existing .json files containing a Postman collection
  • Run Postman collections using newman
  • Analyze results from the execution and load it into XStudio
  • Interpret success and failures
  • Aggregate results into the test session
  • Attach results files for deeper examination by testers
  • run a single folder within a collection if needs so
If you have existing Postman collections, we recommend that you scan them using XStudio Scan.
You will be able to pick and choose the ones you want to load into your XStudio DB.
This saves you from entering many detailed data manually.

Once this is done, you can author them, providing a more narrative description - we recommend you do so for better documenting your test reports and to ease maintainability
You can run each test or include them into a campaign to execute them through a test session.

Remember that you need to get newman installed on your test server for the XStudio launcher to run.
Newman is a nodeJs module/plugin.
XStudio does not ensure that these dependencies be installed and workin.
We recommend you to first run a complete test manually prior to running a test from within XStudio.

This version of the Launcher enforces and will attach the following formatted report files to each test result: html,cli,json,junit
Latest test : On Windows 10-17134, nodeJs 8.11.2, postman 6.1.4 , Newman 3.9.3
This version is the initial one (1.0)

Configuration

The postman.xml file is just a template and must NOT be edited. It's used by the system to build dynamically the form that the user will be able to fill in from the GUI when creating a custom execution configuration.

Parameter Description
General
Test root path This must indicate where are located all the .json postman collection files.
This is a root path. Each test in XStudio has a canonical path that will be appended to this path.
This path MUST NOT include an ending slash.

Default value is: C:\myPostManCollections
Command executor This provide the shell command line to execute. It is needed to ensure XStudio can get the traces from the execution
Default value is: cmd.exe /C
Postman
Environment Local variable file Specify a Postman environment as a .json file.
You do NOT need to provide the .postman_environment.json extension. The launcher automatically adds it. Just state the file name
This is OPTIONAL
There is no default value
Workspace Global variable file Specify a Postman globals file as .json file.
You do NOT need to provide the .postman_globals.json extension. The launcher automatically adds it. Just state the file name
This is OPTIONAL
There is no default value
Newman options You can provide any additional newman option you wish - please refer to the official Newman documentation for this.
Please note that any test using this configuration will use the option provided here.
This is OPTIONAL
There is no default value

These values can be changed while creating the campaign session from XStudio.
Note about file path parameters:
Any parameter referring to a file or folder path (for instance Test root path) can be provided either using separator (if the tests are going to be executed on a Windows agent) or / separator (if the tests are going to be executed on a linux or MacOSX agent).

On windows, if you provide a path containing a, OS-localizable folder such as C:\Program Files, always prefer the English version (i.e. NOT C:\Programmes if you're using a french-localized Windows) or the corresponding native environment variable (i.e. %PROGRAMFILES%).


Specific test attributes

It is possible to associate attributes to individual test. This launcher will recognize and use the following attributes:
  • com.xqual.postman.datafile
  • com.xqual.postman.retries


com.xqual.postman.datafile

Allows specifying a data file to be used by the collection. The data file is not provided by XStudio but is attached to your collection (sse postman official documentation for this)
This is setting the --data flag in newman
ccom.xqual.postman.retries

Allows specifying teh number of times postman will retry the test . (sse postman official documentation for this)
This is setting the --iteration-count flag in newman

Specific test case params

It is possible to aassociate params to individual test case. This launcher will recognize and use the following params:
  • com.xqual.postman.folder


com.xqual.postman.folder

Allows specifying a single folder to run from a collection (sse postman and newman official documentation for this)
This is setting the --folder flag in newman

Process

1) Each test in XStudio must have his dedicated .json postman collection ile. The name of the collection MUST be equal to the name of the test.
2) the launcher will constitute and run the interpreter with the following template:
<Command executor> " newman run " <Test root path>/ [<Test path/>] <test name>.postman_collection.json [--environment <Environment Local variable file>.postman_environment.json] [--globals <Workspace Global variable file>.postman_globals.json] --reporters html,cli,json,junit " [ <Newman options>] [--data <com.xqual.postman.datafile attribute value> ] {--data <com.xqual.postman.retries attribute value> ] {--folder <com.xqual.postman.folder param value> ]
3) all report files will be attached to the results if found
4) The launcher parses the junit XML report file and use it to provide summarized information back to the testers


Permissions

WARNING: if you're running your tests on Windows, it may be required to run the tests as administrator.
Having an account with Administrators permissions may even not be enough in some cases (especially if you're using Windows 10) and you may need to disable completely the UAC (User Access Control) on your computer.
To do so:
  • Press the Windows + R key combination
  • Type in regedit
  • Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
  • In the right-side pane, look for EnableLUA and set the value 0
  • Close the registry editor
  • Restart your computer

Debug

If your tests are not executed correctly or are reporting only failures, this is very likely because your configuration is incorrect or because you used a wrong naming convention for your tests and test cases.

The best way to quickly find out what's wrong is to look at the traces generated by XStudio (or XAgent).
The traces always include the detailed description of what the launcher performs (command line execution, script execution, API calling etc.) to run a test case. So, if you experiment some problems, the first thing to do is to activate the traces and look at what's happening when you run your tests.

Then, try to execute manually in a cmd box the exact same commands.
This will normally fail the same way.
At this point, you needs to figure out what has to be changed in these commands in order to have them run properly.

When you have something working, compare these commands to what's described in the Process chapter above. This will tell you exactly what you need to change.

Most of the time, this is related to:
  • some incorrect values in some parameters of your configuration,
  • the name of your tests,
  • the name of your test cases,
  • the canonical path of your tests