Test data and user pools

Declare datasets once, resolve them per environment, and lease accounts safely across parallel workers.

What you'll learn

How datasets are declared and resolved per environment, which loaders exist, how rows become step variables, how factories stay deterministic, and how user pools hand out accounts to workers without collisions.

Declare sources

automax.project.yaml

data:
  sources:
    users: { type: csv, path: 'data/{env}/users.csv', fallback: data/common/users.csv }
    products: { type: json, path: data/common/products.json }
    posts: { type: yaml, path: 'data/{env}/posts.yaml', fallback: data/common/posts.yaml }
    orders: { type: db, table: td_demo_shop_orders, envColumn: env }
    pet: { type: openapi, spec: ./openapi/petstore.json, schema: Pet }
  factories: ./data/factories.ts
  userPool:
    dataset: users
    roleColumn: role
    leaseStore: file # or db, for runs spread across machines
    leaseTtlMs: 600000

Resolution per environment

Rows are cached per worker; CSV values are cast (true, 42) and ${VAR} references inside cells are interpolated from the same sources as configuration.

Use rows in steps

Given I load dataset "users" row 1
When I login with "{{username}}" and "{{password}}"

Given I load dataset "products" where "sku" is "backpack"
Then I should see the text "{{name}}"

Columns become {{variables}} for the rest of the scenario, alongside vars from the environment and values captured from API responses.

Factories

projects/demo-shop/data/factories.ts

import { defineFactories } from '@automax/core/data';

export default defineFactories({
  user: (f) => ({ email: f.internet.email(), firstName: f.person.firstName() }),
});

Given I generate a "user" from the factory as "newUser"

Faker is seeded from the scenario fingerprint, so a retry regenerates the same data.

User pools

users.poolSize in the environment file caps how many accounts a run may use.
A lease belongs to runId:shardOffset+parallelIndex, so shards never collide.
The file store uses exclusive lock files under .automax/leases/ with a TTL that recovers from crashed workers; the database store uses one conditional insert.
@user:standard on a scenario leases before the browser context is created so the scenario starts logged in; Given I use a leased user with role "standard" does it mid-scenario.

Cleanup

Given I register cleanup DELETE "/posts/{{postId}}"

Cleanups run last-in-first-out at the end of the scenario; failures are attached, never fail the scenario.