base » repeatUntil(steps,maxWaitMs)

Description

This command utilizes the execution of one or more subsequent commands to create a repeat-until-desired-result-reached behavior. In other words, using this command, one can achieve something like the following:

Start Loop
   check condition: Is ConditionA reached?
       if ConditionA reached, then exit loop
   if ConditionA not yet reached, stay in the loop and
       perform TaskA
       perform TaskB
       …
   back to the beginning of the loop

One can perform a series of commands within the repeat-until execution, such as evaluate a SQL execution, wait for certain time, check for specific text or state of a web page or application.

A few things to note:

1. Performing repetitions within a test scenario cause complication to the output format/file. As such, all command assigned for a repeat-until execution will not be updated in the corresponding Nexial output file. One can circumvent this issue by creating customize logs (show in Example below).
2. First command MUST BE an assertion (validation). In other words, any command that starts with assert. It is this first command that will be used to evaluate the need to continue the repeat-until execution or to exit from it.
   1. FAIL to such assertion means to continue the repeat-until loop
   2. PASS to such assertion means to terminate the loop (i.e. the ‘until’ condition has reached) - the repeatUntil(steps,maxWaitMs) command is considered as PASS
3. All other commands (besides the first assertion command) within the repeat-until loop is expected to PASS
   1. Failure in any of these commands (expect the first) will result in the termination of repeat-until loop - the  repeatUntil(steps,maxWaitMs) command is considered as FAIL
   2. EXCEPT when nexial.failFast is set to false. The repeat-until loop honors the nexial.failFast system variable so that one can “collect-all-failures” rather than “fail-at-first-instance”.
   3. To enforce the “fail-at-first-instance” requirement, either
      - set JAVA_OPT=-Dnexial.failFast=true on command line before running Nexial, OR - add to your datasheet: nexial.failFast | true, OR - via command: base | save(var,value) | nexial.failFast | true
4. If one wish to limit the timespan such repeat-until execution, the second parameter maxWaitMs can be used. However, it must be a value greater than 1000 (i.e. 1 second). Use -1 if time should not be considered as a constraint (ie. disable time tracking). This is a great way to simulate a time-out condition.
5. The use of verbose(text) will have no impact to the corresponding output file. However the output produced by this command can be observed in the console log.
6. Thre are 3 System variable specificall related to this command:
   
   1. nexial.repeatUntil.index - to track the loop occurrence.
   2. nexial.repeatUntil.startTime - to track the start time, in epoch, of a repeat-until instance.
   3. nexial.repeatUntil.endTime - to track the end time, in epoch, of a repeat-until instance.

Parameters

• steps - this parameter specifies the number of subsequent (as in immediately following) commands to consider for the repeat-until execution.
• maxWaitMs - this parameter specifies the amount of time to wait before consider the repeat-until execution as a failure (i.e. time out). Use -1 to signify the willingness to wait forever.

Example

Here’s an example of how this command can be used:

Here, we have recruited 5 steps (Row 6 through Row 10) in the repeat-until execution. As stated, the first step MUST be an assertion - assertEqual(). The assertion is “make sure counter equal to 20?”. Upon the successful validation of this assertion, the loop-until execution will exit (as SUCCESS). We use -1 in the repeatUntil(steps,maxWaitMs) command, which is keep looping until the first assertion command is successful.

The rest of the commands are self-explanatory, and fairly inconsequential to the context of this page. Here’s the outcome:

As stated earlier, there is no result or elapsed time for the steps utilized by the repeat-until execution.

See Also