Selenium store result of web service/AJAX call - ajax

Question

Is it possible to store the result of a web service/AJAX call into the store element, so that its value can be used in multiple locations.
The reason for this is we would like to have an automated test suite that uses data defined in a database. This would make it much easier to change bulk data in the tests (instead of searching through all of our test cases to change the data).
I understand that we can create a test case at the beginning of our test suite that defines all of this data however, we would like to easily switch between data sets without having to re-type each value.

Answer 1

I'm not sure how you can do what you're asking. It would be cool to learn. But let me give you a different approach which is very easy. I can answer any questions you may have. Create 3 different commands in your Selenium IDE to start things off, where your target for the open command is the path of the page you're automating.
Command: open
Target: --path--
Value:
Command: storeExpression
Target: 123
Value: var_number
Command: type
Target: TextBox1
Value: ${var_number}
Then use the export option in Selenium IDE as Java code (or another language). You won't have the Options > Format > options unless you turn on "Enable Experimental Features" in options. Choose "JUnit 4 (Remote Control or RC)"--Selenium 1. I'm not familiar with "JUnit 4 (WebDriver)"--Selenium 2 yet, but it's a bit newer, and not as much documentation. Then download Eclipse Classic, the Java JDK, the Selenium client driver for Java (on the Selenium site)--dll #1, and download JUnit 4--dll #2. Import both of those dll files into the Library tab (in Eclipse classic) after creating a new project in the project wizard, and open your export code that was exported using the Selenium IDE format export. Eclipse should be configured to automatically compile your code by default. Then just create an loop in the Java code and repeat the commands above. Then connect to your database from Java (with some simple SQL connection code), and read your data from the result set inside of your loop. Then right click in the Eclipse file explorer and choose JUnit on your unit test to launch a Mozilla Firefox instance to have it automate your loop. Or you can launch any other browser to run your JUnit test.. just change "*chrome" (aka Mozilla not Google Chrome) to "*iexplore" (Internet Explorer) or "*googlechrome" (Google Chrome), etc... for a browser of your choice in the Java code.
Pardon my jargon on "dll files". I meant to write assemblies or libraries. In Java, the correct term would be a *.jar. I'm use to writing in .NET code. If you choose to run your unit tests in .NET, then you will need to repeat most of what I have above, but instead download NUnit and use Visual Studio rather than Eclipse. The documentation is much better for JUnit, so that's why I went that route. That statement might not be correct. That's just what I found to be true from observation when I did a proof of concept for my company.
Oh, and because you're using client drivers, you need to have the Java (JUnit Test) program connect to your Selenium Remote Control Server. So you must download the Selenium server also. Then call the Jar from the command line in Windows. It must be running before running your JUnit test. This server won't run unless the JDK is installed on your machine!
java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.0rc3.jar

Answer 2

The contributed user extension: http://wiki.openqa.org/display/SEL/global makes use of the global array globalStoredVars which you should be able to use.
I started recently to test a multilanguage website using Selenium with javascript, see Testing-a multilanguage website with selenium