Soap UI Post Payload Groovy variable substitution - groovy

Question

Soap UI (Free version)
I have a test case that is a POST that accepts XML as the payload. I wrote a groovy script in the test case that will calculate the readingDate field.
Groovy Script:
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat
import java.util.Calendar
import java.util.TimeZone
Calendar currentTime = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"))
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ")
dateFormat.setTimeZone(currentTime.getTimeZone())
String readingDate = dateFormat.format(currentTime.getTime())
context.setProperty("readingDate", readingDate)
XML Payload:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<foo xmlns="http://www.foo.com/data">
<foobar foobarId="1553310377_20">
<foobarReading>
<readingDate>${readingDate}</readingDate>
<readingValue>451.045</readingValue>
</foobarReading>
</foobar>
</foo>
Request Shown:
POST http://foo:8080/WebServices/rest/data HTTP/1.1
Connection: close
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Content-Type: application/xml
Authorization: Basic TlJDYW46TlJDYW4=
Content-Length: 301
Host: foo:8080
User-Agent: Apache-HttpClient/4.1.1 (java 1.5)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<foo xmlns="http://www.foo.com/data">
<foobar foobarId="1553310377_20">
<foobarReading>
<!-- Should not be empty it should show the current time -->
<readingDate></readingDate>
<readingValue>451.045</readingValue>
</foobarReading>
</foobar>
</foo>

Answer 1

You can achieve that in two ways:
Provided you have the Groovy Script test step invoked before the REST Call. Follow the below modifications to the Groovy Script.
//Instead of setting the property to context
//context.setProperty("readingDate", readingDate)
//Approach 1:
//Set it as a global property for SoapUI
com.eviware.soapui.SoapUI.globalProperties.setPropertyValue('readingDate', readingDate)
//Approach 2:
//Or if you do not want to set it globally and ruin other tests
//Set it as a project (SoapUI Project) property.
//testRunner.testCase.testSuite.project.setPropertyValue('readingDate', readingDate)
In the former case the xml would look like
<readingDate>${readingDate}</readingDate>
In the later case, the property should be a Project property, so
<readingDate>${#Project#readingDate}</readingDate>