How to programmatically build a ForEach input? - groovy

Question

I have written a custom JSR223 PostProcessor in order deduplicate a JSON Extractor array, and then build all of the needed variables for a ForEach Controller
import java.util.stream.Collectors;
def previousValuesMatchNrAsString = vars.get("distinctServiceIds_matchNr");
def previousValuesMatchNr = previousValuesMatchNrAsString ? previousValuesMatchNrAsString.toInteger() : 0;
for(i = 1; i <= previousValuesMatchNr; i++) {
vars.remove("distinctServiceIds_" + i);
}
vars.remove("distinctServiceIds_ALL");
vars.remove("distinctServiceIds_matchNr");
def values = vars.get("serviceIds_ALL").split(",");
def newValues = Arrays.stream(values).distinct().collect(Collectors.toList());
def newValuesCount = newValues.size();
def joinesNewValues = String.join(",", newValues);
vars.put("distinctServiceIds_ALL", joinesNewValues);
newValues.eachWithIndex { var, idx -> vars.put("distinctServiceIds_" + (idx + 1), var) };
vars.put("distinctServiceIds_matchNr", newValuesCount.toString());
I have to cleanup variables first, because this JSR223 PostProcessor runs into another ForEach Controller, and then I have to populate distinctServiceIds_ALL, distinctServiceIds_matchNr and all of the indexed variables in order to use distinctServiceIds as "Input variable prefix" for my ForEach Controller.
Although this works, it seems very hacky to me and I wonder if there's some Groovy function, or something else, to do all of that work.

Answer 1

there are many additional methods defined in groovy
as soon as vars contains type of JMeterVariables to remove old vars you could collect required entries from iterator and call remove for each one
the extension groovy methods for iterator could be found in groovy docs
vars.getIterator().findAll{ it.getKey().startsWith('distinctServiceIds_') }.each{
vars.remove(it.getKey())
}
because of groovy it could be simplified to this:
vars.iterator.findAll{ it.key.startsWith('distinctServiceIds_') }.each{
vars.remove(it.key)
}
the same with other generic types: List, Maps, etc
collecting unique values and transforming to map:
def values = [111,222,333,444,444,444,444]
def valMap = values.unique().indexed().collectEntries{k,v-> ['distinctServiceIds_'+(k+1),v] }
vars.putAll(valMap)
so, check groovy jdk extension documentation