--export-environment some variable will disappear because of merge of global and environment variables

[musteray]

1. Newman Version (can be found via newman -v): 4.4.0
2. OS details (type, version, and architecture): Alpine Linux v3.9 x86_64(docker)
3. Are you using Newman as a library, or via the CLI?via CLI
4. Did you encounter this recently, or has this bug always been there: I encounter it recently
5. Expected behaviour: Global and environment variables should not merge. Also some variables in environment will disappear because of merge
6. Command / script used to run Newman:
   newman run ${WORKSPACE}/collection/pcrf/PCRF_Instantiation.postman_collection.json -e ${WORKSPACE}/collection/pcrf/PCRF_GENERATED.postman_environment.json --export-environment ${WORKSPACE}/collection/pcrf/PCRF_GENERATED.postman_environment.json
   --reporters cli,junitfull --reporter-junitfull-export ${WORKSPACE}/allure-results/outputfile-instantiation.xml --color on -x --verbose
7. Sample collection, and auxiliary files (minus the sensitive details):
   Here's my environment variable

{
  "values": [
    {
      "key": "mgmt_net_name",
      "value": "net_mgmt",
      "description": "",
      "enabled": true
    },
    {
      "key": "vnf_name",
      "value": "pcrf-vnf",
      "description": "",
      "enabled": true
    }
 ]
}

after using --export-environment

{
values: [{
      "key": "mgmt_net_name",
      "value": "net_mgmt",
      "description": "",
      "enabled": true
    }]
}

7. Screenshots (if applicable):

[akaczinski]

looks like if both a Postman Global and Postman Environment file is included in the run, and the --export-environment flag is included, it will overwrite the top variables in the Postman Environment with each of the variables found in the Postman Global file.

Tried including a --export-globals flag to see if that fixed it, it did not.

Temp work around for now might be including dummy variables at the top of your Postman Environment file, which you're fine with having overwritten.

[vikiCoder]

@rbalicante882012 @akaczinski

I tried to reproduce this problem but had no success. Below are the steps I tried to reproduce the problem,

1. Create environment.json with following content:

{
  "values": [
    {
      "key": "foo1",
      "value": "bar1"
    },
    {
      "key": "foo2",
      "value": "bar2"
    }
  ]
}

2. Create globals.json with following content:

{
  "values": [
    {
      "key": "foo3",
      "value": "bar3"
    },
    {
      "key": "foo4",
      "value": "bar4"
    }
  ]
}

3. Run following command
   newman run https://www.getpostman.com/collections/a042727d0e875d7e2010 -e environment.json -g globals.json --export-environment new_environment.json
4. After the run, I got following values in the new_environment.json:

{
  "values": [
    {
      "type": "any",
      "value": "new_bar1",
      "key": "foo1"
    },
    {
      "type": "any",
      "value": "bar2",
      "key": "foo2"
    }
  ]
}

It seems to me that Newman exported the correct environment after the collection run. Please tell me if I am missing anything. And also make sure that you are not deleting the missing variables from your script while running collection (using pm.environment.unset() or pm.environment.clear()).

[musteray]

@akaczinski @vikiCoder

Thanks for the effort but I found a simple trick. I mixed global to environment 👍

@akaczinski I also noticed it. Some environment variables in the top are merged to the global.

[vikiCoder]

@rbalicante882012

I am glad that you found the workaround. But it would be great if we can reproduce this at our end so that we can fix it. Feel free to reach out to us if you can provide exact steps or a sample collection and environment to reproduce the problem.