Automation Guide Action-based testing language Built-in actions Test Support actions Data sets

 refill data set

refill data set

Description

Refill an in-use data set with new data from an external text file. Each row of the data set is derived from a row in the text file.

Arguments

• data set

  Name of the data set.

• text file

  Full file system path to an external text file on the test controller containing the data rows in tab-delimited format.

Valid contexts

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

Applicable Systems/Platforms

Use of this action is supported on the following systems/platforms: Windows, Linux.

Notes

• This action does not modify any values in a dedicated or inline data set. Instead, the effect of this action is to cause the data for the subsequent use data set action to be sourced from the external file rather than the specified data set.
• This action is applicable to both dedicated and inline data sets.
• The external text file and the specified data set must both exist.
• The external text file must have one record (data set row) per line, with tab-delimited fields in each line. The number of fields (that is, total columns separated by tab characters) per line must match the number of columns in the data set.
• Each line of the text file represents one data record, which populates the variables upon each iteration of the use data set / repeat for data set loop.
• 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.

Applicable Built-In Settings

The following settings are applicable to this action: remove double quotes from cells.

Example - Case 1: Dedicated data sets

Test Lines

Result

Effect

Example - Case 2: Inline data sets

Action Lines

Result