34.14 Deprecated nodes

The following nodes have been replaced by newer node types. The nodes can still be executed, but you shouldn't use them anymore.

34.14.1 Test

Note Before QF-Test version 2 the Test node was one of the main building blocks of a test suite. It had a few shortcomings however: Its setup/cleanup structure was too linear and inflexible for complex scenarios and it was never clear whether a Test node represented a logical test case or was just used to implement some sequence. Thus Test nodes have been replaced with Test set and Test case nodes. A Test is a special Sequence that executes extra setup and cleanup code before and after the execution of its child nodes to ensure that each of the children runs under similar conditions and to prevent unwanted side effects between the execution of one child and the next. To do so, a Test has two special, optional child nodes besides its normal children, a Setup as the first and a Cleanup as the last node. With its Implicitly catch exceptions attribute a Test also offers special exception handling to prevent exceptions in one Test from aborting a whole test run. For special cases of data-driven testing a Test may also contain a Data driver, whereas such is typically done in combination with Test sets as described in "Data-driven testing". That functionality can be achieved by using Test step nodes. For backwards compatibility and to ease transition from old-style Test nodes to Test set and Test case nodes QF-Test treats nodes as a Test set or Test case for documentation and report if their place in the hierarchy allows it. In some cases Test nodes have been treated as Test step nodes, e.g. if data-driven test steps have been used. Old test suites with a structure based on Test nodes can by migrated to make use of the new features of Test sets and Test cases. To this end, right-click on a Test node to bring up the context menu. If a transformation is allowed, QF-Test will offer to transform the Test node into a Test set, Test case or Test step node. It is possible to convert a whole hierarchy of Test nodes to a hierarchy of Test set and Test case nodes by selecting the recursive conversion option in the popup menu. Note Both Test set and Test case nodes may contain Setup or Cleanup nodes for backwards compatibility. In a Test set, these work just as in a Test: Setup and Cleanup are executed for each test contained in the Test set. In a Test case however, Setup and Cleanup are only run once at the beginning and end of its execution. If a Test set or Test case has both a Dependency and Setup/Cleanup nodes, the Dependency will be executed first. Setup and Cleanup will have no impact on the dependency stack described in "Dependency execution and Dependency stack".

Contained in: All kinds of sequences.

Children: Optional Data driver followed by an optional Setup at the beginning, then any kind of executable nodes and an optional Cleanup as last node.

Execution: The Variable definitions of the Test are bound. If there is a Data driver node, it is executed to create a data driving context and bind one or more Data binders for iteration over the determined data sets as described in "Data-driven testing". For each of its normal child nodes, the Setup is executed, then the child and then the Cleanup. After the last execution of the Cleanup is complete, the variables are unbound again.

Attributes:

Name

The name of a sequence is a kind of short description. It is displayed in the tree view, so it should be concise and say something about the function of the sequence.

Variable: No

Restrictions: None

Name for separate run log

If this attribute is set it marks the node as a breaking point for split run logs and defines the filename for the partial log. When the node finishes, the respective log entry is removed from the main run log and saved as a separate, partial run log. This operation is completely transparent, the main run log retains references to the partial logs and is fully controllable. Please see "Split run logs" for further information about split run logs.

This attribute has no effect if the option Create split run logs is disabled or split run logs are explicitly turned off for batch mode via the -splitlog command line argument.

There is no need to keep the filename unique. If necessary, QF-Test appends a number to the filename to avoid collisions. The filename may contain directories and, similar to specifying the name of a run log in batch mode on the command line, the following placeholders can be used after a '%' or a '+' character:

Character	Replacement
%	Literal '%' character.
+	Literal '+' character.
i	The current runid as specified with -runid <ID>.
r	The error level of the partial log.
w	The number of warnings in the partial log.
e	The number of errors in the partial log.
x	The number of exceptions in the partial log.
t	The thread index to which the partial log belongs (for tests run with parallel threads).
y	The current year (2 digits).
Y	The current year (4 digits).
M	The current month (2 digits).
d	The current day (2 digits).
h	The current hour (2 digits).
m	The current minute (2 digits).
s	The current second (2 digits).

Variable: Yes

Restrictions: None, characters that are illegal for a filename will be replaced with '_'.

Variable definitions

This is where you define the values of the variables that remain bound during the execution of the sequence's child nodes (see "Variables"). See "Tables" about how to work with the table.

Variable: Variable names no, values yes

Restrictions: None

Implicitly catch exceptions

When an exception is thrown during the execution of one of the Test's normal child nodes, the Test is usually terminated prematurely. This may not be what you want, since no information is gained from the execution of the rest of the child nodes.

If the Setup and Cleanup of the test are set up so you can guarantee the same initial conditions for each child node even in the case of an exception, you can set this attribute to make the Test catch the exception implicitly. That way, if an exception is caught from a normal child node, the exception is logged and the execution of that child node is stopped. Then the Test continues with the Cleanup as if nothing had happened.

Exceptions thrown during the execution of either the Setup or the Cleanup cannot be caught that way and will always terminate the Test

Variable: No

Restrictions: None

Maximum error level

When a warning, error or exception occurs during a test run, the state of the corresponding node of the run log is set accordingly. This state is normally propagated to the parent node in a way that ensures that the error state of a run log node represents the worst of its child nodes' states. Using this attribute, the maximum error state that the run log node for a sequence will propagate, can be limited.

Note This value has no effect on the way exceptions are handled. It only affects the error states of the run log nodes and by that the exit code of QF-Test when run in batch mode (see. "Starting QF-Test"). It also has no effect on the creation of compact run logs (see command line argument -compact). The node for a sequence in which a warning, error or exception occurs is never removed from a compact log, even if the error is not propagated due to the setting of this attribute.

Variable: No

Restrictions: None

Execution timeout

Time limit for the node's execution in milliseconds. If that limit expires the execution of that node will get interrupted.

Variable: Yes

Restrictions: >= 0

QF-Test ID

When using the command line argument -test <n>|<ID> for execution in batch mode you can specify the QF-Test ID of the node as an alternative to its qualified name.

Variable: No

Restrictions: Must not contain any of the characters '\', '#', '$', '@', '&', or '%' or start with an underscore ('_').

Delay before/after

These attributes cause a delay before or after the execution of the node. If a value is empty, the Default delay from the global options is used.

Variable: Yes

Restrictions: Valid number >= 0

Comment

Here you can enter a comment that explains the purpose of this node. This is the preferred way of documenting the test suite.

Note For detailed documentation, especially for Test set, Test case or Procedure nodes, this text area might not be the right place. There are many excellent editors that are much better suited to this task. The option External editor command lets you define an external editor in which comments can be edited conveniently by pressing Alt⁠+⁠Return or by clicking the button.

You can trigger special behaviors of some nodes using doctags, please see Doctags.

If you enter text in the comment field of a Component node, the node will be considered as 'used' when you want to mark or delete unused components.

Variable: Yes

Restrictions: None