26.1
If - else

You already came across If nodes in the Setup sequence in the chapter Starting the Application. Let's have a closer look at the details of the node.

Figure 26.1:  Setup Sequence with if-else structures

By means of an If node you can control whether certain nodes will be executed or not. In our case whether to start the SUT application. First, we need to find out if the client is already running. This is the job of the Wait for client to connect node, which writes the result of its inquiry, either true or false, into a variable named isSUTRunning.

Figure 26.2:  Wait for client to connect writes the result into the variable "isSUTRunning"

The If node has a Condition attribute where you'll find an expression evaluating the result variable isSUTRunning. As we want to refer to its value we need to use the syntax $() (see also note on variable syntax in chapter section 24.1).

Figure 26.3:  If node evaluates the variable

Depending on whether the client is already running or not QF-Test will execute the nodes nested in the If node.

If you like you can check the value of the variable isSUTRunning in the variable bindings table. The first time it will have the value false so that the condition not $(isSUTRunning) will become true and the SUT will be started. The second time it will be true and the if-condition will fail. The nodes nested in the If node will be skipped.

Note Within the first node of the setup sequence you will find more If nodes. They are used to set global variables determining which win browser to use, depending on the operating system. For better readability only If nodes have been used. You may just as well use Elseif and Else to implement that functionality. The child nodes of an Elseif node would be executed if the If condition were false and the Elseif condition were true. The child nodes of an an Else node would be executed if the If condition and all Elseif conditions were false.

For checking the operating system you can directly resort to a QF-Test variable: QF-Test stores the information about the operation system in a group variable where the group is called 'qftest' and the variables 'linux', 'macos' or 'windows', respectively. The syntax for accessing group variables is ${group:varname}, e.g. ${qftest:windows}.