Retrieving JSON data outside of test methods

It is often required to create a common setup or teardown method that also uses data from a JSON file. In those cases, you would not pass in a DataProvider attribute to the method, but instead call an extraction method directly.

The following code samples are a variation of the DataProvider's fetchData method. These methods allow the user to extract the set(s) of data using rowID and return it as a JSONObject or JSONArray object. These objects can then be cast to a POJO that the user defines:

// extractData_JSON method - create JSONObject containing all data sets
public static JSONObject extractData_JSON(String file) throws Exception {
    FileReader reader = new FileReader(file);
    JSONParser jsonParser = new JSONParser();

    return (JSONObject) jsonParser.parse(reader);
}

In the preceding example, the method extracted all sets of data from the file and returned them as a JSONObject. But users would most likely want just specific sets of data...