Jmeter Regular Expression Extractor. How to save all returned values to a single variable? - regex

Question

I'm quite new to Jmeter and already spent numerous hours to figure it out.
What i'm trying to achieve:
Using Post Processor Regex Extractor I wrote a regex that returns me several values (already tested it in www.regex101.com and it's working as expected). However, when I do this in Jmeter, I need to provide MatchNo. which in this case will only return to me one certain value. I sort of figured it out that negative digit in this field (Match No) suppose to return all values found. When I use Debug Sampler to find out how many values are returned and to what variables they are assigned, I see a lot of unfamiliar stuff. Please see examples below:
Text where regex to be parsed:
some data here...
"PlanDescription":"DF4-LIB 4224-NNJ"
"PlanDescription":"45U-LIP 2423-NNJ"
"PlanDescription":"PMH-LIB 131-NNJ"
some data here...
As I said earlier, at www.regex101.com I tested this with regex:
\"PlanDescription\":\"([^\"]*)\"
And all needed for me information are correct (with the group 1).
DF4-LIB 4224-NNJ
45U-LIP 2423-NNJ
PMH-LIB 131-NNJ
With the negative number (I tried -1, -2, -3 - same result) at MatchNo. field in Jmeter Regex Extractor field (which Reference Name is Plans) at the Debug Sampler I see the following:
Plans=
Plans_1=DF4-LIB 4224-NNJ
Plans_1_g=1
Plans_1_g0="PlanDescription":"DF4-LIB 4224-NNJ"
Plans_1_g1=DF4-LIB 4224-NNJ
Plans_2=45U-LIP 2423-NNJ
Plans_2_g=1
Plans_2_g0="PlanDescription":"45U-LIP 2423-NNJ"
Plans_2_g1=45U-LIP 2423-NNJ
Plans_3=PMH-LIB 131-NNJ
Plans_3_g=1
Plans_3_g0="PlanDescription":"PMH-LIB 131-NNJ"
Plans_3_g1=PMH-LIB 131-NNJ
I only need at this particular case - Jmeter regex to return 3 values that contain:
DF4-LIB 4224-NNJ
45U-LIP 2423-NNJ
PMH-LIB 131-NNJ
And nothing else. If anybody faced that problem before any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Based on output of the Debug Sampler, there's no problem, it's just how RegEx returns the response:
Plans_1,Plans_2,Plans_3 is the actual set of variables you wanted.
There should also be Plans_matchNr which should contain the number of matches (3 in your example). It's important if you loop through them (you will loop from 1 to the value of this variable)
_g sets of variables refer to matching groups per matching instance (3 in your case). Ignore them if you don't care about them. They are always publish, but there's no harm in that.
Once variables are published you can do a number of things:
Use them as ${Plans_1}, ${Plans_2}, ${Plans_3} etc. (as comment above noticed).
Use Plans_... variables in loop: refer to the next variable in the loop as ${__V(Plans_${i})}, where i is a counter with values between 1 and Plans_matchNr
You can also concatenate them into 1 variable using the following simple BeanShell Post-Processor or BeanShell Sampler script:
int count = 0;
String allPlans = "";
// Get number of variables
try {
count = Integer.parseInt(vars.get("Plans_matchNr"));
} catch(NumberFormatException e) {}
// Concatenate them (using space). This could be optimized using StringBuffer of course
for(int i = 1; i <= count; i++) {
allPlans += vars.get("Plans_" + i) + " ";
}
// Save concatenated string into new variable
vars.put("AllPlans", allPlans);
As a result you will have all old variables, plus:
AllPlans=DF4-LIB 4224-NNJ 45U-LIP 2423-NNJ PMH-LIB 131-NNJ