SoapUI 4.6.3 Assertion Contains with Regex

Could you describe the problem and not the implementation?
Are you trying to match the timestamp against something in particular? Do you need to match the whole string exact, or is it good enough to match only up to the minutes?

Hey SiKing,

Thanks for your replay, I really appreciate that. The problem is that I´m always get the “Missing token” error message. I also told the implementation because I thought it would be helpful to tell what I’ve already tried without success, isn’t it?

My desired result would be to check for the combination of the tag "<Kuendigungsdatum>" & "some string which is formatted like a timestamp" is in the response. In this case like yyyy-mm-dd..and so on. That it, what I try to archive with that.

Its like that
<DatumKuendigung>yyyy-mm-dd:hh:mm.ssss+xx:xx

Best Regards
Sten

When I compare timestamps, I chose one of two options:

1. Easy, but less precision
Use XPath Match. The XPath expression will be something like

substring(//*:DatumKuendigung, 0, 17)

and the expected result, if you are comparing to "right now", will be something like

${=String.format("%tFT%tR", new Date(), new Date())}

This example is accurate only to the minute, and completely ignores the timezone!

2. Difficult, but higher precision
Use Script assertion. You will have to read in the String of your timestamp and convert that to a Date object, then do the comparison. Your code might look something like the following.

def nowDate = new Date()
def sdf = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSX")
def currentDate = sdf.parse(context.expand('${' + context.currentStep.name + '#ResponseAsXml#//*:DatumKuendigung}'))
// adjust how accurate you need the comparison; following checks that the time is accurate to within 5 seconds
def secondsDiff = Math.abs((nowDate.getTime() - currentDate.getTime()) / 1000)
assert secondsDiff < 5 : "Too great of a difference with server!"

The comparison can be done to the milisecond and takes timezones into consideration.

Hey SiKing,

Thank you very much for your explanation, but I guess there is still a misunderstanding? The XPath wit substring and the timestamp are a good solution but unfortunately not suiting to my situation.
The tag/value <KuendigungsDatum> is sometimes there and sometimes not and the timestamp is always in the same format but at the time of compare with different and unknown values and not the current time. So I thought the contain where I check for the tag and the format of the timestamp via regex could be a good choice, isn’t it? For any reason it’s hard to find any documentation about this feature from soapui how to implement regex with the assertion “contains”. Is it possible to achieve this with your or my solution, what do you think?

See you
Sten

stenofski wrote:
The tag/value <KuendigungsDatum> is sometimes there and sometimes not and the timestamp is always in the same format but at the time of compare with different and unknown values and not the current time.

Again: describe the problem!
When is the element present, when is it not present? What are you trying to compare it against?

Hey SiKing,
the basic problem is, that I don’t know how to catch if tag <KuendigungsDatum> AND some always same formatted but changing values timestamp is present with the soapui given function “contain” with e.g. regex.

Situation 1
<KuendigungsDatum>&Timestemp is not present | I don’t care, it’s failed anyway

Situation 2
<KuendigungsDatum>&Timestemp is present | I want to know that the tag and some specific formatted timestamp is present and I don’t care about the values of the timestemp.

Thanks for your passion so far
Sten

OK, we are now sliding towards theory ...

1. To check for only presence of the element, you can use the following XPath assertion

exists(//*:KuendigungsDatum)

Or you could check that it contains something

not(empty(//*:KuendigungsDatum/text()))

and your expected result should be simply

true

2. Next is your question regarding

stenofski wrote:
I want to know that the tag and some specific formatted timestamp is present and I don’t care about the values of the timestemp.

I am assuming your service is a SOAP service, and further there is a WSDL. The service (not the business logic of your app) was probably generated by some 3rd party framework. Further, the WSDL hopefully defines this field as DateTime. You can check this right in the WSDL from SoapUI. If that is the case, then it is up to the framework, and not your application, to ensure that the result is correctly formatted. In other words, testing the formatting of this field should be out of scope for your test effort, because this is generated by 3rd party software. You can check with your developer(s) to confirm all of this.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the WSDL defines this field as a string, in which case you need to have a chat with your developer(s), or possibly your development lead, and they need to explain to you why it is not a DateTime field.

HTH, good luck.

Hey SiKing,

About this “exists”-check, I’m fine now, even if it’s a complete different solution than I’ve been searching for. Thanks for that, I’ll use this.

Secondly, all your assumptions are completely right and I’ve checked the WSDL for this and it seems to be an date formatted entry.

  ...
  <xs:element name="DatumKuendigung" type="xs:dateTime"/>
  ...

The other thing what I’ve been asking for initially was the function of soap to use the regex within the soap function contains.

I don’t know how to use this and the smart bear documentation isn’t that helpful in the first place at all. Okay, they show a very basic scenario with an sessionid and then link to the JAVA regex implementation but this doesn’t tell me how to put this in this specific contains menu suiting to my situation.

http://www.soapui.org/Functional-Testing/getting-started-with-assertions.html

3.1. The Contains Assertion

I thought this would be a quite nice way to check for the existing of response tags and there formated values(and dont care of the values it self)especially for further things I need to check for. But currently it looks like the internet-brain doesn’t know how to use this, because I can’t find anything about this..

Best Regards
Sten

Although I am familiar with regex, I hardly ever use it in SoapUI.

Just a clarification:
The Contains assertion with regex is quite useful if your Response is just text/plain. But you should always prefer XPath assertion for simple verification, because it gives you much finer control.

Well, the first time I’ve seen this checkbox I thought this would be awesome to use it. I’ve been working for a couple of years with Regex in QTP with VBS scripting and really enjoyed it. It’s quite bad to see this function almost unused within soap.

Thanks for your expertise and passion SiKing.

Best Regards
Sten