Modifying JMeter scripts programatically

Problem : Is there any scripting or GUI way to massively change from WebService(SOAP)
Request (DEPRECATED) to SOAP/XML-RCP Request? http://jmeter.512774.n5.nabble.com/Question-about-WebService-SOAP-Request-DEPRECATED-td5718693.html

Solution : The JMeter script file is an actual XML file so any solution that manipulates XML can be used to solve the above problem.  As Michael Kay's excellent books on XSLT were staring at me , the way I implemented this was in XSLT.
The first thing we need to do was use what is called an identity transform

<xsl:template match="@*|node()">
 <xsl:copy>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" /> 
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

i.e. essentially copy the source XML to the destination. With that done we can now get to the problem at hand - which is intercept all the deprecated requests and transform them to the new one

In order to do so we can create a JMeter script which has both of these elements and look at what XML gets generated so that we know the source and destination XML we want
The deprecated XML

 <WebServiceSampler guiclass="WebServiceSamplerGui" testclass="WebServiceSampler" testname="WebService(SOAP) Request (DEPRECATED)" enabled="true">
          <elementProp name="HTTPsampler.Arguments" elementType="Arguments">
            <collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments"/>
          </elementProp>
          <stringProp name="HTTPSampler.domain">server</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="HTTPSampler.port">port</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="HTTPSampler.protocol">http</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="HTTPSampler.path">path</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebserviceSampler.wsdl_url"></stringProp>
          <stringProp name="HTTPSampler.method">POST</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="Soap.Action">ws-soapaction</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="HTTPSamper.xml_data">ws-SOAP-DATA</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebServiceSampler.xml_data_file">C:\Users\dshetty\Downloads\apache-jmeter-2.9\bin\logkit.xml</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebServiceSampler.xml_path_loc"></stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebserviceSampler.timeout"></stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebServiceSampler.memory_cache">true</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebServiceSampler.read_response">false</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebServiceSampler.use_proxy">false</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebServiceSampler.proxy_host"></stringProp>
          <stringProp name="WebServiceSampler.proxy_port"></stringProp>
          <stringProp name="TestPlan.comments">comment</stringProp>
        </WebServiceSampler>

The non deprecated SOAP request

        <SoapSampler guiclass="SoapSamplerGui" testclass="SoapSampler" testname="SOAP/XML-RPC Request" enabled="true">
          <elementProp name="HTTPsampler.Arguments" elementType="Arguments">
            <collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments"/>
          </elementProp>
          <stringProp name="SoapSampler.URL_DATA">url</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="HTTPSamper.xml_data">data</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="SoapSampler.xml_data_file">c:/test.xml</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="SoapSampler.SOAP_ACTION">soapaction</stringProp>
          <stringProp name="SoapSampler.SEND_SOAP_ACTION">true</stringProp>
          <boolProp name="HTTPSampler.use_keepalive">false</boolProp>
          <stringProp name="TestPlan.comments">comment</stringProp>
        </SoapSampler>

Knowing this , the template is easy

  <xsl:template match="WebServiceSampler ">
    <xsl:element name="SoapSampler">
        <xsl:attribute name="guiclass">SoapSamplerGui</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:attribute name="testclass">SoapSampler</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="@testname ='WebService(SOAP) Request (DEPRECATED)' ">
                <xsl:attribute name="testname">SOAP/XML-RPC Request</xsl:attribute>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:attribute name="testname"><xsl:value-of select="@testname"/></xsl:attribute>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
        <xsl:attribute name="enabled"><xsl:value-of select="@enabled"/></xsl:attribute>
        <elementProp name="HTTPsampler.Arguments" elementType="Arguments">
            <collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments"/>
        </elementProp>
        <stringProp name="TestPlan.comments"><xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='TestPlan.comments']/text()" /></stringProp>
        <stringProp name="SoapSampler.URL_DATA"><xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='HTTPSampler.protocol']/text()" />://<xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='HTTPSampler.domain']/text()" />:<xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='HTTPSampler.port']/text()" /><xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='HTTPSampler.path']/text()" /></stringProp>
        <stringProp name="HTTPSamper.xml_data"><xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='HTTPSamper.xml_data']/text()" /></stringProp>
        <stringProp name="SoapSampler.xml_data_file"><xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='WebServiceSampler.xml_data_file']/text()" /></stringProp>
        <stringProp name="SoapSampler.SOAP_ACTION"><xsl:value-of select="stringProp[@name='Soap.Action']/text()" /></stringProp>
        <stringProp name="SoapSampler.SEND_SOAP_ACTION"><xsl:value-of select="(stringProp[@name='Soap.Action']/text() != '')" /></stringProp>            
        <boolProp name="HTTPSampler.use_keepalive">false</boolProp>        
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:template>

Where we just map the older elements into their newer forms (wherever possible). So for example we match an element named "WebServiceSampler" and replace it with "SoapSampler" . We transform the testname to either use the default if the deprecated element used the default or we use the name the user specified. We copy attributes and nested elements.
 You can then use ANT or any other way to style your input scripts into newer ones for one or many files

<target name="transformWS">
    <xslt
        in="CompareXML-RPCRequest.xml"
        out="test.jmx"
        style="transformWS.xsl"/>

</target>

An alternate approach would have been to generate java code that could parse XML and remove/replace objects but the identity transform mechanism makes this technique hard to beat. Any Object binding mechanism would run into issues when JMeter changes it schema but the XSLT technique is limited to only having to worry about source and destination.
I've also always toyed with the idea of creating a functional suite of tests that user's would  run at will without being limited to the tests defined in the file and this is the approach I would use there as well - more to come.

Example - https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=1BD02FE33F80B8AC&id=1BD02FE33F80B8AC!892