read local xml/json files to set env-variables

[Mahmoud-Elsaqqa]

Hello Anton,
I'm a big fan of your plugin really,

I encountered a case where I'm trying to send a POST request to a mockserver with multiple response expectation, so it would be very useful to have a chance to read a local json/xml file and set it as the value of env-variable in pre-request script, to dynamically change json expectations.
This also will have many more benefits.
I don't know if there is currently a way that I can achieve this or not, anyway, let me know what you think about this.

[AntonShuvaev]

Hello,

Currently, there is no built-in function for reading files, but since the script runs on GraalVM JS, you can use Java classes. To read a file, you can write something like this:

const Files = Java.type('java.nio.file.Files');
const Paths = Java.type('java.nio.file.Paths');

const path = Paths.get("path_to_your_file.txt");

try {
    console.log(Files.readString(path));
} catch (e) {
    console.error("Error reading file: " + e.message);
}

This method is not very convenient, so I'm planning to implement an "Embedded Expressions" feature. This will allow you to write JavaScript expressions using variables along with predefined or user-defined functions. Among the predefined functions, there will definitely be a readFile function. You will then be able to define your variable like this:

{
    myVariable: {{ readFile('myFilePath') }}
}

With this feature, resolving the variable will execute the expression and return its result, such as the content of a file in the example.