Creating Test Data in Excel Sheet for complex search function

Question

I'm creating test data for search function in a mobile app. But the search function is little bit tricky.

Let me give an example. We have mobile app which we can buy dogs. in this mobile app we have categories of dogs.

1. Guard dogs
2. Senior dogs
3. Service dogs

Each dog category has different search fields.

Assume I want to buy a service dog and I tap search function. then there will be a different screen with search fields. Breed, Age, Sex , Weight, Service etc. under breed we have 14 different species with check boxes. For Age we have radio buttons.

If I buy a Domestic doc it will have fields like breed,age and sex only.

So I want to create test data in an excel sheet.

How can I manage the data in a excel sheet for each category?

Answer 1

In my opinion ,create separate worksheet for each search fields with all possible values in it and provide hyperlink of those worksheet to all dog categories and even you can reuse those search field worksheet in case of common search fields.

Answer 2

As you have hirarchical test data, I would suggest to use xml/json to hold the data in a test object instead of Excel.