Supplying Property Variables for Testing

Testing in different environments requires different variable values. When we try to hard code the value, our tests will become inflexible and will not be able to switch between different test environments. For this purpose we need to externalise the data. One way of doing this would be storing data in property files. The framework has built in support for reading from property files.

 controller.properties //decides test enviroment
 application-{test environment}.properties //environment specific data file

The controller properties files should contain the value environment = {test environment} for example if your test environment name is ‘TRAINING’ the the value should be environment = TRAINING. This is an easy set up for your local runs. You can override this value in your CICD pipelines by setting pipeline environment variables. The corresponding properties file would be in the format application-training.properties.

How To Read Data

If you need to read data using the built in framework method, you need to have three essential files as below

controller.properties //decides test enviroment
application-{test environment}.properties //environment specific data file
configuration.properties

The first two files - controller.properties and application-{test environment}.properties should be put inside the folder test/resources/properties

The property value can be read as a string using the method PropertiesFinder.getProperty("key")

Data Read Order

The order of data reading would be

Environment Variables > Configuration.Properties > application-{environment}.properties

This is given as such because, we might need to override the static values in our properties files using the system environment variables. For example, regardless of what ‘environment’ you have put in the controller.properties file, if you want to pass a different environment variable, that value will gain the precedence.