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The soapUI Interface

soapUI is a standard desktop application adhering to established User Interface concepts for Integrated Development Environments, as available in for example Eclipse, NetBeans and IDEA. Most actions have keyboard shortcuts and tooltips, you should have no problems finding your way around. soapUI makes heavy use of "Inspectors"; i.e. tabs that can be shown and hidden by selecting them.

The soapUI window is divided into the following views:

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 "Properties" panel
  • Double clicking or pressing enter on a selected item will open the items' editor to the right if available
right

The soapUI desktop containing editors and viewers for those double clicked items in the navigator.
  • Cycle between active panes with Ctrl-Tab or use Ctrl-W to switch
  • Maximize, Minimize, Resize or 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 necessary
bottom-left
  • The Properties panel will show information on the item currently selected in the navigator
bottom right

A color coded log view showing log messages from soapUI

an overview of the Web Testing tool, soapUI

You can set a centered background image for the default desktop by placing a soapui-backgroung.gif/jpg/png file in the soapUI bin folder when using the default desktop

The Navigator

The following objects are currently shown in the navigator tree:

  • Projects node : the soapUI workspace
    • Project node(s) : for each project in the workspace

      • Interface/Service node(s) : for each WSDL Interface or REST Service in the project

        • Operation/Resource node(s) : for each WSDL Operation or REST Resource in the containing Interface/Service

          • WSDL Request node(s) : for each WSDL request created for the containing WSDL Operation

          • REST Resource node(s) : for each child REST Resource

          • REST Method node(s) : for each REST Method defined for a Resource

            • REST Request node(s) : for each REST Request created for the containing REST Method

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

        • TestCase node(s) : for each TestCase in the TestSuite

          • TestSteps node, contains the TestCases'

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

          • LoadTests node, contains the TestCases'

            • LoadTest node(s) : for each LoadTest in the containing TestCase

      • MockService node(s) : for each MockService in the project

        • MockOperation node(s) : for each MockOperation in the MockService

          • MockResponse node(s) : for each MockResponse in the containing MockOperation

The tree can be navigated using the standard keyboard actions. An items' associated desktop panel can be opened by double clicking it or selecting it and pressing Enter.

Start soapUI Testing
Did you know?

There is a commercial version of soapUI available; soapUI Pro.

soapUI Pro contains productivity enhancements as well as offers Professional World Class support.

Try soapUI pro to soap test

Browser Component

soapUI bundles the JXBrowser component provided by TeamDev software for displaying HTML pages (the startup page, etc) and REST responses in the HTML Response Viewer, which gives broad file format support (images, flash-movies, etc..). Unfortunately this component does not work under a 64-bit JRE and will in this situation disable itself. If you are experiencing other issues with soapUI that seem to be related to JXBrowser, adding the -Dsoapui.jxbrowser.disable=true flag to the command-line options (see ) will disable it anyhow.

Drag and Drop

soapUI provides extensive support for dragging and dropping items in the Navigator, resulting in corresponding Clone or Move operations, alternatively add or import actions, for example dragging a Request to a TestCase creates a TestRequest Step corresponding to the dragged Request. It is also possible to drag and drop within or between the TestSuite and TestCase editors and the Navigator to rearrange, move, or copy items.

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

The first 9 actions are the same as those for the Workspace popup menu, please go to the Workspaces page for details. After these come the following actions:

  • Preferences - Sets global soapUI Preferences
  • Save Preferences - Saves the current global settings
  • Import Preferences - Prompts to import global settings from another location (for example an old soapUI installation). After loading, soapUI may need to be restarted for all settings to be activated
  • Recent - Contains submenus for recent editors, projects, or workspaces for easy switching
  • Exit - Prompts to exit soapUI
  • Exit without saving - prompts to exit soapUI without saving anything
  • Online Help - displays this page in an external browser

Tools Menu

  • Contains actions for invoking integrated tools as described in the Tool Integrations section.

Desktop Menu - Shows actions related to the currently selected Desktop.

  • Switch Windows - opens a Switch Window dialog for switching to another open editor
  • Maximize Desktop - hides or shows the Navigator and Log-Inspectors
  • 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
  • Open TestCase Layout (soapUI Pro Tabbed Desktop only) - enabled if a TestCase is selected in the Navigator; will create a desktop with the TestCase to the left and all TestStep windows in a Tab Group to the right.

Help Menu - general information and soapUI Pro specific actions

  • Starter Page - Opens the Starter Page which is by default shown when soapUI starts
  • User Guide - Opens the soapUI User Guide
  • Getting Started - Opens the soapUI Getting Started documents
  • System Properties - Opens a list of all currently defined system properties (see below)
  • Update License (soapUI Pro only) - see License Management
  • Show License Details (soapUI Pro only) - see License Management
  • soapUI.org/eviware.com - Opens http://www.soapui.org or http://www.eviware.com
  • About soapUI - Shows a version information dialog

System Properties

The System Properties option from the help menu opens a simple dialog showing all current defined system properties, which can be useful for debugging system or security settings, etc?

System Properties in soapUI

Log Tabs

The bottom right of the soapUI workspace contains a number of log windows, each displaying corresponding output;

the soapUI Logs Tab

Right clicking on a log will show a popup menu with options to clear and enable or disable the log and to copy selected rows to the clipboard. Also, log-entries can be selected or copied to the clipboard for transfer to external tools. An option to set the maximum number of rows is available (default is 1000), when exceeding this limit, old rows are removed from the log (i.e. fifo).

The following tabs are currently displayed (when needed):

  • soapUI log - general notifications and messages
  • http Log - http wire log for sent http requests for viewing the actual data sent and received on the socket (disabled during LoadTesting)
  • jetty log - mock-service related status notifications from
  • groovy log - log messages from groovy scripts using the available log object (disabled during LoadTest but can be enabled from File/Preferences/UI Settings)
  • error log - log with diagnostic information for errors that arise during execution, this log should be included in any bug-reports if it contains related error information. Please note that not all errors logged have to be actual errors in soapUI, for example if a target server or service is not available, a socket connection error will be shown here, which may well be due to "natural" causes.
  • memory log - shows an scrolling monitor over how much of the memory allocated to soapUI that is being used. Right-clicking open a menu with a "GC" option to trigger the Garbage Collector.

soapUI uses log4j for logging, you can customize the log4j configuration by putting a log4j xml configuration file named "soapui-log4j.xml" in the soapUI bin directory (or the current working directory when not running from there).


Next: soapUI Pro Tabbed Desktop