Best Practice on Script Names

Explanation and Best Practise

First and foremost, the best approach is keep things simple and short. It starts with the script name.

When creating test script, it is often advised to the script name meaningful but succinct. Nexial uses script file name, along with other runtime-generated data to formulate file names for runtime artifact such as screenshots, logs, etc. Special care is applied in order to keep the generated files uniquely named. In addition, Nexial generates links to these runtime artifacts in the output spreadsheet as well. Since Excel does not allow more than 255 characters in formula (Nexial creates links via Excel formula), having a test script with very long name might cause failure in execution.

Consequences of Using Script with Long Name

If the recommended best practice not followed, you might end up getting error while executing script as shown below.

The above exception would be thrown during execution if the initial script name or the formulated file name breaches the required 255 ASCII characters in any operating system.

Example of Filename Created in Nexial

Below is the one of the sample example and description of test artifact generated which will cause the “String literals in formula” error.

Below is an example how Nexial derives the file name for a screenshot file. Again, for the purpose of keeping such files unique and descriptive, various execution metadata is added to the generated file name (the bold portions are dynamic):

[project].Test_Plan.[sequence in plan],[script name].[**run ID as yyyyMMdd_hhmmss].[iteration #].xlsx_[Scenario]_[Activity]_[Row #].png

Let’s suppose that:

• project is xyzProject
• sequence in plan is 003
• script name is long_Script_Name_with_way_too_much_information_included_but_not_all_necessary
• run ID is 20171130_152727
• iteration # is 001
• scenario is User Registration without Picture ID
• activity is Provide Personal Information
• Row # is A33

This would generate a file name that is 201 characters. Include the path information, this is way too long for Excel to accept as a link location.

Again, keep your script names short and sweet.