This topic explains how to configure and apply the Transmit tool that lets you transmit and receive over a socket connection.

Sections include:

Understanding Transmit/Listen

The Transmit tool lets you transmit and receive over a socket connection. It is used for communicating directly with a specific port of a host. For example, you can use it to send a direct request to the server, then verify the response. If you are expecting something sent to a specific port on your machine, you can use this tool to listen at a particular port. 

You can use this tool to perform a lower level of testing than the SOAP tool allows because it looks at the socket connection, which is handled by HTTP and sits one layer below the SOAP call. It is also useful if you have applications communicating through XML over a socket connection; it can be used to perform functional and regression testing of components that communicate using socket-based protocols.

Transmitting

This tool can be used as part of a test suite, or it can be applied to a file or set of files available in the file tree.

If you are using this tool as a tool output, you need to specify the following information:

• The host machine.
• The port number that you want to use.
• Whether or not you want it to wait for a response until the other side closes the connection.

Otherwise, you need to specify the following information:

• The file or text it should transmit.
• The host machine.
• The port number that you want to use.
• Whether or not you want it to wait for a response until the other side closes the connection.

You can specify this information in the Transmit tool’s configuration panel.

To learn about special options available for this tool’s output, see Output Options.

Listening

To listen using the Transmit/Listen tool:

1. Right-click the Transmit Test Suite tree node.
2. Choose either Start Listening> Single Session or Start Listening> Sequential Sessions from the shortcut menu that opens.
   • In Single Session mode, the tool will listen for a client to open a connection to the specified port, receive the client's transmission after the connection has been opened, then stop listening to the port after the client closes the connection.
   • In Sequential Session mode, the tool will resume listening (waiting for a new connection) after the current connection has been closed by the transmitting side; this allows you to receive transmissions from multiple clients, or multiple transmissions of a single client.

If you stop listening but do not close the connection to the host, the tool will ignore the incoming data from the connection, but you will still be able to send data over the connection. To stop listening:

1. Right-click the Transmit Test Suite tree node.
2. Choose Stop Listening from the shortcut menu that opens.

When the connection is closed, you cannot send or receive any data. To close the connection to the host:

1. Right-click the Transmit Test Suite tree node or tool bar button
2. Choose Close Connection from the shortcut menu that opens.

For details on special options for this tool’s output, see Output Options.

Output Options

Transmit tool contains the following output options:

• stdout
• stderr
• Result Window
• Packetize by New Lines
• Packetize by Documents
• File

For additional information on these output options, see Adding Test Outputs.