Using appsettings.json in C# selenium automation project

Question

I'm working on automation tests which I'm still new to writing the scripts. I'll try to be as short as possible. I'm building everything in .NET CORE. Selenium C# in Visual Studio

Basically what I would like to know is how to pull string from appsettings.json file to my test class file?

Basically what I have inside my appsettings.json file ->

  "BaseURL": "https://google.com/",

What I have in my test clase is:

    
       [TestCase]
        public void LoginToGmail()
        
            *currently Im using hardcoded version of*
            driver.url = "https://google.com/"*
            IWebElement GmailLogo = driver.FindElement(By.Xpath.......);
            Assert.IsTrue(GmailLogo.Displayed);
        

But I would like to use something like driver.url = "BaseURL" <- (string from the .json file)

How do you pull it from the .json file?

Any kind of help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

Thank you @SteveBeck for the link, helped me. Also thanks to @Greg Burghardt. I managed to set it up like this: created new class for the read Json file and browser startup/close.

using Newtonsoft.Json;
using NUnit.Framework;
using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;
using System;
using System.IO;

public class NewSetup
{

    public class GetSetUpFile
    {
        public string BaseURL { get; set; }
        public string SetupJson { get; set; }
        private readonly string _strSetupFile;

        public GetSetUpFile(string jsonfile)
        {
            _strSetupFile = jsonfile;
        }

        public void ReadSetUpFile()
        {

            SetupJson = File.ReadAllText(_strSetupFile);
        }

        public class StartBrowserDriver
        {

             protected IWebDriver driver;

            [SetUp]
            public void StartBrowser()
            {
                var setup = new GetSetUpFile(@"C:\\PATH\\\TO\\\appsettings.json");
                setup.ReadSetUpFile();
                //Deserialize json objects
                setup = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<GetSetUpFile>(setup.SetupJson);
                var url = setup.BaseURL;
                var DesiredURL = url;
                driver = new ChromeDriver("C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Driver");
                driver.Navigate().GoToUrl(DesiredURL);
                driver.Manage().Window.Maximize();
                driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5);
            }
            [TearDown]
            public void CloseBrowser()
            {
                driver.Close();
                driver.Quit();
            }
        }
    }
}

Navigate back to your main test class:

  
class User_is_able_to_login_to_Gmail : StartAndCloseBrowserDriver
{
[TestCase]
public void public void LoginToGmail();
IWebElement GmailLogo = driver.FindElement(By.Xpath.......);
Assert.IsTrue(GmailLogo.Displayed);
GmailLogo.Click();
\\\\continue\\\\

The test runs & works. If someone has some pointers about the build, please let me know :) Thanks to everyone!

Answer 2

Any JSON can be deserialised into a class using C#, this is not limited to an appsettings.json file and you may find it useful to store data sets in json format for testing purposes.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/serialization/system-text-json-how-to?pivots=dotnet-5-0

Answer 3

You can use the ConfigurationBuilder class to read the config file. Assuming this structure for appsettings.json:

{
    "BaseURL": "https://..."
}

Reading and using the configuration becomes:

var settings = new ConfigurationBuilder()
    .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json")
    .Build();

driver.Url = settings["BaseURL"];

Important: Be sure the "Copy to Output Directory" property on appsettings.json is set to "Always" or "If Newer" (right-click on appsettings.json in Solution Explorer and choose "Properties"):