Postman Launcher (postman.jar)

The Postman launcher allows interfacing with Postman collections.

This 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's scan feature. You will be able to pick and choose which collections you want to load into your XStudio DB.
This saves you from entering many details such as the name or canonical path of each test manually.

Once this is done, you can author them, providing a more narrative description - we recommend you do so to better document your test reports and to ease maintainability.

You can run each test individually or include them into a campaign to execute them through a session.

Prerequisites

You need to ensure newman (a nodeJs module/plugin) is installed on your agent as the launcher relies on it. XStudio does not ensure that these dependencies are properly installed and working so please double-check this before anythiong else. 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 formal tests were done with nodeJs 8.11.2, postman 6.1.4 and Newman 3.9.3 but it should be fine with any newer version too.

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` This default settings is appropriate for Windows. For linux, provide the shell command supported by your distribution.
Postman
Environment Local variable file	Specify a Postman environment file (a .json file). Default value is: `<empty>` WARNING: You do NOT need to provide the `.postman_environment.json` extension in the 'option' parameter below. The launcher automatically adds it. Just state the file name.
Workspace Global variable file	Specify a Postman globals file (a .json file). Default value is: `<empty>` WARNING: You do NOT need to provide the `.postman_globals.json` extension in the 'option' parameter below. The launcher automatically adds it. Just state the file name.
Newman options	Any additional newman option you wish - please refer to the official documentation for more details. Please note that any test using this configuration will use the option provided here. Default value is: `<empty>`

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 an 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

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 (please refer to the postman official documentation if you need more details).

This is automatically setting the --iteration-data flag in newman.

com.xqual.postman.retries

Allows specifying the number of times postman will retry the test.

This is automatically setting the --iteration-count flag in newman.

Specific test case params

It is possible to associate params to individual test case.
This launcher will recognize and use the following params:

com.xqual.postman.folder

Allows specifying a single folder to run from a collection (please refer to the postman and newman official documentation if you need more details).

This is automatically setting the --folder flag in newman.

Process

1) Each test in XStudio must have his dedicated .json postman collection file on the agent (the name of the collection file MUST be equal to the name of the test in XStudio).

2) The launcher will build and run the following command:


    <Command executor> newman run <testRootPath>/<testPath/>/<testName>.postman_collection.json

    [--environment <environmentLocalVariableFile>.postman_environment.json]

    [--globals <workspaceGlobalVariableFile>.postman_globals.json]

    --reporters html,cli,json,junit

    <Newman options>

    [--iteration-data <com.xqual.postman.datafile attribute value>]

    [--iteration-count <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

Launchers / Automated tests