Parsing Strings in Katalon – Split, Substring and Readlines

Once text has been read from the page, it’s time to do something with it. In many cases, only a portion of the text is needed. For example, you may need the first part of a text string, or the last part. An example text string would be:

(1/26/2018 – DAY 19 OF 22)

The first thing is to read in the entire string into a variable:

importDate = WebUI.getText(findTestObject(‘Page_/Sales Dashboard/mtd_Sales_Dashboard_Import_Date’))

Since I want the text to the left of the hyphen, I can use that in my split command. The [0] at the end indicates I want text to the left. If I change it to [1] it would be text to the right.

parsedDate = (importDate.split(‘ – ‘)[0]) – returns (1/26/2018

parsedDate = (importDate.split(‘ – ‘)[1]) – returns DAY 19 OF 22)

From there I can manipulate the text further for my needs.

It’s also possible to break the line at the hyphen and return the resulting two strings into a List.

String[] parsedDate = importDate.split(‘ – ‘)

Since it is now a list, it can be referenced by index:

importDate = parsedDate[0] – sets importDate to the text  (1/26/2018

businessDays = parsedDate[1] – set businessDays to the text DAY 19 OF 22)

The above commands accomplish the same thing, the the first uses a single variable, the second uses a List.

The List comes in handy for something like an address. If the address is Charlotte, NC 28203, the address can be split at the comma.

String[] splitAddress=branchAddress.split(‘, ‘)

splitAddress[0] – set to Charlotte

splitAddress[1] – set to NC 28203

Instead of splitting a string at a predetermined character, you may need to split the string after a certain number of characters. For example, Branches are listed as:

Branch #123 – Charlotte, NC

Branch #140 – Huntersville, NC

Branch #005 – Rock Hill, SC

For this example, I need the Branch number. Since the first part of the string is always the same, the Substring command can be used to retrieve X number of characters. Substring starts at position 0.

branchName=tempBranchName.substring(0,11) – Returns 11 characters – Branch #005

If I only wanted the number of the branch, I would start at position 7, the space after branch and read to position 11, the end of number.

branchName=tempBranchName.substring(7,11) – Returns – #005

The .readlines() command performs parsing on multiple lines worth of text from a cell and breaks them into individual lines. An address in a textbox would be a use of .readlines()

For example, the full text would be:

1313 Mockingbird Ln

Charlotte NC, 28203

Since all of that comes in as one block of text, it needs to be parsed into lines. Once the text has been set to a variable using the GetText command, the following commands can parse through it.

branchAddress=WebUI.getText(findTestObject(‘Page_/Search Branch/Branch Profile Address’))

//Get the Branch Profile Address from the return results and parse it into multiple lines

//The address will be compared to the address from the Search Results page

branchProfileAddress = branchAddress.readLines() – Is a list consisting of the two lines of the address

branchProfileStreetAddress=branchProfileAddress[0] – Returns 1313 Mockingbird Ln

branchProfileCityState=branchProfileAddress[1] – Charlotte NC, 28203