Question

I am using TestNG for my selenium tests.
There is a test called “Create Firm” which needs to be run multiple times on my laptop.

So I have written a class called “CreateFirm” for this, and the data for various firms reside in an excel spreadsheet.

At various times, I need to create various sets of firms, which I control using a column in Excel spreadsheet , which holds my computer name.

I use the @Factory to create my “CreateFirm” classes, which has one @Test method to create a Firm.

In excel spreadsheet If i have assigned Firm1,Firm2,Firm3,Firm4 in the same order to my laptop, @Factory creates them in a random order like Firm4,Firm3,Firm1,Firm2

My question is how to get @Factory to create test instances in the order that I want ?

My @Factory method is

      @Factory
  public Object[] runCreateFirm()
  {

        //This is where I get the list of test cases assigned to my laptop
        this.test_id_list=get_test_ids_for_test_run("Create Firm (class approach).xls", "Global");      

        Object[] result = new Object[this.test_id_list.size()];


        int index=0 ;
        for (String firm_id: this.test_id_list)
        {
            //This is where I get all the test data from the Excel spreadsheet
            HashMap<String,String> test_data_row=this.get_row_from_excel("Create Firm (class approach).xls", "Global", "test_case_id", firm_id);

            System.out.println("Inside Firm Factory ,index="+index +", test case id="+ test_data_row.get("test_case_id"));

            //CreateFirm is the class which will use the data and do all the UI actions to create a Firm
            result[index]=new CreateFirm(test_data_row);
            index++;
        }
        return result;
  }

XML is

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<suite name="CreateFirm Suite">
  <test name="Create Firm Test"  order-by-instances="false">
    <classes>
      <class name="regressionTests.factory.CreateFirmFactory"/>
    </classes>
  </test>
</suite>

Answer 1

Managed to write the interceptor method for my requirement.
To start with I introduced a new field in my class called “priority” . I couldnt use @Priority because, my test class had only one test method, in which case all my instantiations will have the same priority.
So I introduced a new field called priority which will have the order in which which the class should be instantiated. I use that field in the interceptor method to set the order of instantiation

public List<IMethodInstance> intercept(List<IMethodInstance> methods,ITestContext context) 
{

    List<IMethodInstance> result = new ArrayList<IMethodInstance>();
    int array_index=0;

    for (IMethodInstance m : methods)
    {
        result.add(m);
    }
    //Now iterate through each of these test methods
    for (IMethodInstance m : methods)
    {
        try {               
            //Get the FIELD object from - Methodobj->method->class->field
            Field f = m.getMethod().getRealClass().getField("priority");
            //Get the object instance of the method object              
            array_index=f.getInt(m.getInstance());
        } 
         catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }           
        result.set(array_index-1, m);           
    }

    return result;
}