My biggest problem working with plain WebTests, is that all the input to my forms are the recorded values. In some of the text fields I need value variations every run.

To solve this problem I created a WebTest plugin. This plugin creates a couple of Context variables on the PreWebTest event. These variables can easily be used in the WebTest using the: {{VAR_NAME}} syntax.

• {{RANDOM}} – Gives you a random string of 5 characters
• {{RANDOMNUM}} – Gives you a string of 4 random numeric characters
• {{TIME_STAMP}} – Gives you a time stamp as a string

Just copy the code below into a C# Class Library project and compile. You can now connect your WebTest to this WebTestPlugin.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting;

namespace MyPlugin
{
    public class RandomGenerator : WebTestPlugin
    {
        public override void PreWebTest(object sender, PreWebTestEventArgs e)
        {
            Random ran = new Random();
            e.WebTest.Context["RANDOM"] = GetRandomString(5);
            e.WebTest.Context["RANDOMNUM"] = GetRandomNumberString(4);
            e.WebTest.Context["TIME_STAMP"] = GetTimeStamp();
        }

        public override void PostWebTest(object sender, PostWebTestEventArgs e)
        {
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a random uppercase string with the letters A-Z
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="length">Length of the string to generate</param>
        /// <returns>A random generated string of upper case characters</returns>

        protected string GetRandomString(int length)
        {
            Random ran = new Random();
            char[] chArray = new char[length];

            for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
            {
                chArray[i] = (char)ran.Next(65, 90);
            }

            return new string(chArray);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a random string with numeric characters
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="length">Length of the string to generate</param>
        /// <returns>A random generated string of numeric characters</returns>

        protected string GetRandomNumberString(int length)
        {
            Random ran = new Random();
            char[] chArray = new char[length];

            for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
            {
                chArray[i] = (char)ran.Next(48, 57);
            }

            return new string(chArray);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a timestamp
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The timestamp as a string</returns>

        protected String GetTimeStamp()
        {
            DateTime dt = DateTime.Now;
            return dt.ToShortDateString() + " " + dt.ToLongTimeString() + ":" + dt.Millisecond;
        }
    }
}

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