Lesson #8: Using an automation harness

You may at times find it necessary to do some things in your test that cannot be achieved with built-in actions, nor with the user-defined actions that build upon them. User-scripted actions allow you to write actions in a third-party programming language, such as Java, Python, orC#.

Such user-scripted actions can be used to supplement the functionality of built-in TestArchitect actions. Examples of situations that call for user-scripted actions may include the need to access a specific API, or to perform a complex function like checking the sorting order of a table.

There are two essential tasks involved in creating a user-scripted action:

1. Coding the action itself;
2. Registering the action with TestArchitect, so that TestArchitect knows how to find it and interface with it.

The intended audiences include testers and automation engineers.

Time: Duration: 2 hours

Prerequisites:

• Basic understanding of the TestArchitect user interface
• Familiarity with the TestArchitect test editor
• Essential understanding of TestArchitect repositories, projects and tests
• Some familiarity with high level programming language(s), such as, Python, Java and C#.

What you will learn:

• How to invoke a user-scripted action
• How to develop a custom user-scripted action
• Accessing the methods and functions of the ABT library in your code
• Writing harness script code to interact with a UI
• Reporting results from a user-scripted action

Understanding harnesses
Some project requirements cannot be addressed strictly by building upon built-in actions.

Invoking a user-scripted action
What it takes to access a user-scripted action from your test module.

Working with the Python harness
How to implement TestArchitect actions using the Python programming language.

Working with the Java harness
How to implement TestArchitect actions using the Java programming language.

Working with the C# bundle harness
How to implement customized TestArchitect actions using the C# programming language.

Summary: What you have learned