JMeter - Changing user defined variables from command line - command-line

Question

I'm trying to update a "user defined variable" in a jmeter test plan using the command line
jmeter -n -t SimpleJmxExample.jmx -l log.jtl -Jtestproperty=202
as you can see I'm using the -J argument. However it doesn't seem to make any difference? Is there a better/more accepted way of passing in different variables for a test plan?
Here is my jmx file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jmeterTestPlan version="1.2" properties="2.1">
<hashTree>
<TestPlan guiclass="TestPlanGui" testclass="TestPlan" testname="Test Plan" enabled="true">
<stringProp name="TestPlan.comments"></stringProp>
<boolProp name="TestPlan.functional_mode">false</boolProp>
<boolProp name="TestPlan.serialize_threadgroups">false</boolProp>
<elementProp name="TestPlan.user_defined_variables" elementType="Arguments" guiclass="ArgumentsPanel" testclass="Arguments" testname="User Defined Variables" enabled="true">
<collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments"/>
</elementProp>
<stringProp name="TestPlan.user_define_classpath"></stringProp>
</TestPlan>
<hashTree>
<ThreadGroup guiclass="ThreadGroupGui" testclass="ThreadGroup" testname="Thread Group" enabled="true">
<stringProp name="ThreadGroup.on_sample_error">continue</stringProp>
<elementProp name="ThreadGroup.main_controller" elementType="LoopController" guiclass="LoopControlPanel" testclass="LoopController" testname="Loop Controller" enabled="true">
<boolProp name="LoopController.continue_forever">false</boolProp>
<stringProp name="LoopController.loops">1</stringProp>
</elementProp>
<stringProp name="ThreadGroup.num_threads">1</stringProp>
<stringProp name="ThreadGroup.ramp_time">1</stringProp>
<longProp name="ThreadGroup.start_time">1358160198000</longProp>
<longProp name="ThreadGroup.end_time">1358160198000</longProp>
<boolProp name="ThreadGroup.scheduler">false</boolProp>
<stringProp name="ThreadGroup.duration"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="ThreadGroup.delay"></stringProp>
</ThreadGroup>
<hashTree>
<HTTPSampler guiclass="HttpTestSampleGui" testclass="HTTPSampler" testname="Test Http Response Code" enabled="true">
<elementProp name="HTTPsampler.Arguments" elementType="Arguments" guiclass="HTTPArgumentsPanel" testclass="Arguments" enabled="true">
<collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments"/>
</elementProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.domain">httpstat.us</stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.port"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.connect_timeout"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.response_timeout"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.protocol">http</stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.contentEncoding"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.path">/${testproperty}</stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.method">GET</stringProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.follow_redirects">true</boolProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.auto_redirects">false</boolProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.use_keepalive">true</boolProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.DO_MULTIPART_POST">false</boolProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.monitor">false</boolProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.embedded_url_re"></stringProp>
</HTTPSampler>
<hashTree>
<HeaderManager guiclass="HeaderPanel" testclass="HeaderManager" testname="HTTP Header Manager" enabled="true">
<collectionProp name="HeaderManager.headers">
<elementProp name="Cache-Control" elementType="Header">
<stringProp name="Header.name">Cache-Control</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Header.value">max-age=0</stringProp>
</elementProp>
<elementProp name="Accept-Language" elementType="Header">
<stringProp name="Header.name">Accept-Language</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Header.value">en-US,en;q=0.8</stringProp>
</elementProp>
<elementProp name="Accept" elementType="Header">
<stringProp name="Header.name">Accept</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Header.value">text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8</stringProp>
</elementProp>
<elementProp name="User-Agent" elementType="Header">
<stringProp name="Header.name">User-Agent</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Header.value">Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.97 Safari/537.11</stringProp>
</elementProp>
<elementProp name="Accept-Encoding" elementType="Header">
<stringProp name="Header.name">Accept-Encoding</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Header.value">gzip,deflate,sdch</stringProp>
</elementProp>
<elementProp name="Accept-Charset" elementType="Header">
<stringProp name="Header.name">Accept-Charset</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Header.value">ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3</stringProp>
</elementProp>
</collectionProp>
</HeaderManager>
<hashTree/>
<ResultCollector guiclass="ViewResultsFullVisualizer" testclass="ResultCollector" testname="View Results Tree" enabled="true">
<boolProp name="ResultCollector.error_logging">false</boolProp>
<objProp>
<name>saveConfig</name>
<value class="SampleSaveConfiguration">
<time>true</time>
<latency>true</latency>
<timestamp>true</timestamp>
<success>true</success>
<label>true</label>
<code>true</code>
<message>true</message>
<threadName>true</threadName>
<dataType>true</dataType>
<encoding>false</encoding>
<assertions>true</assertions>
<subresults>true</subresults>
<responseData>false</responseData>
<samplerData>false</samplerData>
<xml>true</xml>
<fieldNames>false</fieldNames>
<responseHeaders>false</responseHeaders>
<requestHeaders>false</requestHeaders>
<responseDataOnError>false</responseDataOnError>
<saveAssertionResultsFailureMessage>false</saveAssertionResultsFailureMessage>
<assertionsResultsToSave>0</assertionsResultsToSave>
<bytes>true</bytes>
</value>
</objProp>
<stringProp name="filename"></stringProp>
</ResultCollector>
<hashTree/>
<Arguments guiclass="ArgumentsPanel" testclass="Arguments" testname="User Defined Variables" enabled="true">
<collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments">
<elementProp name="testproperty" elementType="Argument">
<stringProp name="Argument.name">testproperty</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Argument.value">200</stringProp>
<stringProp name="Argument.metadata">=</stringProp>
</elementProp>
</collectionProp>
</Arguments>
<hashTree/>
</hashTree>
</hashTree>
</hashTree>
</hashTree>
</jmeterTestPlan>

Answer 1

Well, with -J argument you are setting PROPERTY, and in User Defined Variables config - VARIABLE. It will define two different entities, although having the same name, they will have different values.
In your situation you can do the following.
Set jmeter property value in command-line as above in your question
...-Jtestproperty=202
In UDV config set variable with value from property:
testproperty = ${__property(testproperty,,)}
or
testproperty = ${__P(testproperty,)}
Use ${testproperty} further in the script.
As well you can possibly do the same wihout using variable and simply refer property as {__P(testproperty,)} to get value set in command-line.