SoapUI Tutorial for Beginners (free version)

SoapUI is a a free open source tool to test web services. It can test both SOAP web services and RESTful web services. You can use SoapUI for both functional testing and performance testing of web services. Since SoapUI is written in Java, SoapUI is cross-platform meaning that it can run on multiple operating systems like Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

How to install SoapUI? The steps to install SoapUI free version are very simple. In order to install Soap ui tool, download the SoapUI installer from SoapUI official website. Double-click to run the installer. Select the destination folder, components, tutorials location, Start Menu folder and desktop icon and click Finish. You can see the actual installation of SoapUI on Windows and much more in my SoapUI tutorial for beginners. or read on...

Now, let us learn a few SoapUI basics. SoapUI IDE has three main windows:

1. Navigator : It is the top left-hand side window. It shows the Project tree, which has the project, interfaces, methods and requests.
2. Desktop/ Inspector : It is the right-hand side window. It shows the settings of whichever item you have opened (you can double-click any item to open it in SoapUI Inspector).
3. Properties : It is the bottom left-hand side window. The Properties window shows the properties of the item selected in the Navigator window. You can use Properties to specify your test case e.g. you can change the service endpoint or authentication information.
   

SoapUI Project :  SoapUI saves a project as a single file in XML format.

SoapUI Request : A sample request has ? in place of parameters. You can provide a value in place of ?. Then send the sample request to get a response from the web service.

Test Structure in SoapUI : There are three levels in the test structure. These are TestSuites, TestCases and TestSteps :

1. Test suite : A test suite is a set of test cases. Test cases can be grouped according to your needs into one or more test suites within a single project. You can click the green arrow icon to run your test suite.
2. Test case :  A test case is a set of test steps. The test steps together test a particular functionality of the web service. 
3. Test step : A test step is a part of a test case. A single test step either does some action or validates some data. When a test case is run, the test steps are executed in order. Multiple test steps can be added to a single test case. Many different test steps are available in SoapUI including Soap Request, REST Request and HTTP Request. I have listed the different SoapUI test steps in my SoapUI Tutorial for Beginners.

SoapUI Assertion : An assertion is an expected result. In SoapUI, many assertions are available like Property Content, Compliance, Status and Standards, Script, SLA, JMS and Security. You can click the green arrow button to run the test case. The Assertions icon turns green if all the assertions are successful. It turns red if any assertion fails.

Want to see SoapUI free version in action? Or learn more like how to create project in SoapUI, how assertion works or how a SoapUI test suite works? All is demonstrated in my SoapUI Tutorial for beginners. Thank you.