soapui Overview

Prerequisites

Although soapui should be easy to get started with, you will need to have a good grasp of the following concepts/technologies to get the most out of soapui's functionality.

  • WSDL - basic concepts (services, ports, bindings, porttypes), relation to xml-schema
  • SOAP - basic concepts, relation to WSDL (bindings, etc), different encoding types (soap-encoded/literal) and message styles (document/rpc)
  • XML and related technologies - XPath, XML Schema, namespaces, etc

You can find most specifications at W3C and tutorials at several sites, for example W3Schools and zvon.org.

The soapui interface

soapui is a standard desktop application adhering to established ui-concepts (as available in for example eclipse, IDEA, etc). Most actions have keyboard shortcuts and tooltips, you should have no problems finding your way around..

The soapui desktop is divided into the following views:

top-left

The main navigator showing a hierarchy of all projects/interfaces/etc. (see below)
  • Selecting an item will show available overview information in the bottom-left "Overview" tab.
  • Double-clicking an item will open the items desktop pane to the right (if available).
top-right

The soapui "desktop" containing panes for those double-clicked items in the navigator.
  • Cycle between active panes with Ctrl-Tab
  • Maximize/Minimize/Resize/Move as usual using each panes window menu
  • Focusing on a pane will automatically put focus on its item in the navigator (scrolling into view if neccessary)
bottom-left

a tabbed pane containing 2 tabs:
  • The Windows tab show a list of all the windows currently open desktop panes. Double-clicking an item will bring it into focus.
  • The Details tab will show information on the item currently selected in the navigator
bottom right

A log view showing status information on soapui actions (implemented as a log4j appender).

Navigator Tree Model

The following objects are currently shown in the navigator tree:
  • Projects : the soapui workspace
    • Project node(s) : for each project in the workspace

      • Interface node(s) : for each interface in the project

        • Operation node(s) : for each operation in the interface

          • Request node(s) : for each request created for the operation

      • TestSuite node(s) : for each testsuite in the project

        • TestCase node(s) : for each testcase in the project

          • TestCase Step node(s) : for each testcase-step, together with a colored icon indicating the status of that step.

Main Menu

Most actions in soapui are performed through toolbar buttons or context-sensitive right-button menus. The following actions are available from the main menu:

File Menu
  • New WSDL Project - adds a new WSDL-based project to the current workspace
  • Import Project - imports an existing project file into the current workspace
  • Save all - Saves the current state of all projects and their model items
  • Exit - prompts to exit soapui
Window Menu
  • Close Current - closes the currently active desktop pane
  • Close All - closes all desktop panes
  • Closes Others - closes all desktop panes except the currently active one
  • - Menu items for each desktop pane - focuses on that pane in the soapui desktop


Next: Workspaces / Projects