Automation Guide Action-based testing language Built-in actions System actions Command Line

 execute command

execute command

Description

Execute a command-line command and return its output.

Arguments

• command

  Command to be executed

• variable

  Variable to receive the command output

• timeout

  (Optional) Maximum wait time for the specified command to complete execution (units: seconds; valid range: 1 to 86400; default = 300)

  If the timeout is reached, the running command is terminated.

• charset

  (Optional) The encoding type of execute command’s output.

  • Allowable values:
    • Shift-JIS: Encode the file using Shift-JIS format. Recommend for use with Japanese.
    • UTF-8: (Default) Encode the file using UTF-8 format.

Valid contexts

This action may be used within the following project items: test modules and user-defined actions.

Notes

• This built-in action is supported only on Windows test controllers; it is effective on Windows, iOS and Android test platforms.

• The execute command action can be invoked to execute any of the following:

  • Command line utilities.
  • Any application that can be invoked from the command line.
  • An Android Debug Bridge (adb) command line that allows you to communicate with either an emulator instance or a connected Android device.
  • Command lines that lets you communicate with a connected iOS device.

• execute command works synchronously: that is, it causes test execution to wait for the specified command to finish before control is returned to the test. To execute commands asynchronously – that is, launch a command or application and continue with the test run without waiting – precede the contents of your command with the start command (see Example - Case 2).

  Tip: 
  You can view the full syntax of the start command by typing start /? in the command prompt window.

• If you want to write the command output to a file, rather than to the variable defined in the variable argument, use the redirect command output (>) operator in your command string. For example, to redirect a directory listing to the file dirlist.txt:

                      command              variable
  execute command     dir > dirlist.txt    x
  

  (Note that the output is fully directed to the file, and that the variable, while still a required argument, remains empty, or at its previous value.)

• This action supports the <ignore> modifier. If the string <ignore> is present as the value of any of the arguments, or any argument contains an expression that evaluates to <ignore>, the action is skipped during execution.

Example - Case 1

Suppose you issue the dir command in your automation script to see the available files and directories in the D:\Development directory.

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Instead of writing the dir output to the var_output variable, you can write the output to a file by using the redirect command output (>) operator.

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Effect

Example - Case 2

Suppose you may want to issue two commands in your automation script.

• One command is to launch an application, such as Internet Explorer, and
• the other is to see available files in a specified directory, such as D:\Development.

Additionally, these two commands must run asynchronously (without waiting for each command to finish).

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Result