Boost Your Automation Testing Efficiency: Mastering Remote File Operations with Java

SMB Protocol

In today’s interconnected world, the need to access files and resources over network protocols is increasingly common. One such protocol is the SMB (Server Message Block), widely used for sharing files, printers, and other resources on a network. In this blog post, we will explore how to access files over the SMB protocol in Java using the jcifs-ng library.

In a recent project, I was part of a team where we have do testing of the file hosted on NFS .The system needed to retrieve files from remote SMB servers, process their contents, and perform various operations based on the file data. To achieve this, we leveraged the power of the jcifs-ng library.

Let’s consider a specific use case from our project to illustrate the practical application of the code. In our system, we needed to retrieve XML and JSON files from a designated SMB server folder. These files contained configuration data for different components of our distributed system, and we needed to dynamically read and update file as per the user input.

To work with jcifs-ng, we need to import the below dependencies. Add the following Maven dependency to your project’s pom.xml file.

<dependency>
<groupId>eu.agno3.jcifs</groupId>
<artifactId>jcifs-ng</artifactId>
<version>2.1.8</version>
</dependency>

First of all we will create a function that helps in creating connection to the remote server as below. getConnection() method to handle the authentication and connection details specific to our project. This allowed us to establish a secure connection to the remote SMB server and access the designated folder.

Creating connection to remote Drive.

Now we will use the above method and read the content of xml and json file hosted on the folder of the remote server as below.

Filtering out json and XML file using Java 8

We have a limited number of file so we have used filter method. If you have more files and want to do process faster you can parallelStream Java method also.

To ensure the reliability and robustness of our file integration module, we implemented error handling and logging mechanisms. We added try-catch blocks to handle exceptions gracefully and log any errors or unexpected scenarios encountered during file retrieval and processing.

In this blog post, we explored how to access files over the SMB protocol in Java using the jcifs-ng library. We analyzed a code snippet that demonstrated various aspects of file integration, such as establishing connections, filtering files based on name patterns, and processing file contents. Additionally, we discussed a real-world use case where the code snippet was applied in a distributed system project, showcasing its practical utility and adaptability.

By leveraging the power of the SMB protocol and the jcifs-ng library, automation engineers can seamlessly integrate file operations within their Java applications, enabling efficient network resource sharing and management. Whether it’s retrieving configuration files, processing data, or integrating with external file systems, the above code snippet provides a solid foundation for working with files over the SMB protocol.