Editing a XML From A Coded Step

I got an interesting request from a customer today. It seems the app that the user intends to test has a user.config file associated with it. And here's what the user is looking to do in his own words:

How do I create a test which modifies the user.config file before opening the application?

Hopefully it will be interesting for you to see how I put this together. I did a bit of research and it went like this:

1) What's a user.config file?

I figured I probably have one of these on my hard-drive. I did a Windows search and I located a single user.config file - it was a XML file. I copied it into c:\test\user.config. This was to be my guinea pig - so far so good.

2) We need an XML API

So user.config is a XML file. It's still possible to edit it as a regular txt file (using the System.IO API) but that seems a bit amateurish. I wanted to use a XML API. System.XML which is a .Net assembly was my tool of choice

3) Putting together the code

I spent a bit of time researching this. Mostly I looked at MSDN. Here are a few of the articles I checked out:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162365.aspx

Anyway, here's the code that will take the user.config file from  c:\test\user.config and add a comment node to it:

XmlDocument config = new System.Xml.XmlDocument(); \\Create new document
config.Load("C:\\test\\user.config"); \\Load the existing content 

XmlNode newElem = config.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Comment,config.Name,config.NamespaceURI); \\Create a new node to add to the document
newElem.InnerText = "this is my node"; \\Add the text content of the new node

config.AppendChild(newElem);  \\Put newly created node into the document
config.Save(XmlWriter.Create("C:\\Intel\\user.config")); \\Overwrite the existing xml file with the new document (which is the old document plus a node)

It's C# code but you can convert it to VB if you need to by using our coded convertor. I put this code in a coded step.

4) Adding the necessary references

In order to make this code works you'll need to add an Assembly reference to System.XML. On my machine I located the file in the following location:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\System.XML.dll

5) Need this to execute before/after your test?

No problem! You can make that work as seen here.

About the author

Stoil Stoychev

Stoil Stoychev has been helping customers solve their complex testing challenges leveraging his in-depth knowledge of Telerik Test Studio. He has traveled the globe fine-tuning his technical expertise and helping our valued clients succeed. In his spare time he enjoys motorcycles, live music and various sports.