If we want to add lots of data to a test step. Like for example we hhave a test step addProducts and we want to add category name ,product name ,price ,quantity etc to that test step then instead of adding all those values at project,suite or test case level we can instead make a properties file some where and read data from there.

We can create a text file and save it as “soap.properties”. In this way we make properties file

We open this file in any text editor and in that we define all our properties. category_name = "books" product_name = "harry potter" quantity = "100" price= "10"

Then for our test step for which we want to read data from properties file we add a properties step and then click the button “Load from external file” ,browse and choose the file we created and then we also click the tick box “Create existing properties “ and then we see all the properties will be loaded.

so basically typing all properties in an external file and then loading that file in test step properties is a little easier than creating all name value pairs in test step properties itself.