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 T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1 Doc Collection
 20/04/10

T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1 Language Reference

Last update: 16 April 2010

Contents

1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose
1.2 Overview
1.3 Enterprise Features
2. Language Syntax
2.1 Language Structure
2.2 Time Values
2.3 Variables
2.4 Procedures
2.5 Numeric Expressions
2.6 Boolean Expressions
2.7 If/Else Statement
2.8 For Statement
2.9 Return Values
2.10 Java Code Blocks
3. Command Syntax
3.1 Desktop Commands
3.1.1 Connect
3.1.2 Disconnect
3.1.3 Press
3.1.4 Type / Typeline
3.1.5 Mouse
3.2 Administrative & Execution Control Commands
3.2.1 Var
3.2.2 Eval
3.2.3 Include
3.2.4 Run
3.2.5 Pause
3.2.6 Exit
3.2.7 Wait
3.2.8 Waitfor
3.2.9 Compareto
3.2.10 Exec
3.2.11 Break
3.3 Reporting Commands
3.3.1 Screenshot
3.3.2 Report
3.3.3 Warning
3.3.4 Sendmail
3.3.5 Script
3.3.6 Step
3.4 I/O Commands
3.4.1 File
3.4.2 Excel

1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose

This document provides a complete specification of the proprietary test script language supported by T-Plan Robot Enterprise version 2.1. Its goal is to provide a complete syntax and functionality reference to those who write automated test scripts using this tool and its testing framework. As the scripting language is tightly coupled with the Java Test Script API, it is also intended to provide a complementary functionality reference for design of Java test scripts.

The document is based on specification of its predecessor VNCRobot 1.3, with which it maintains backward compatibility, and describes test script requirements, parsing and processing rules, language structure and syntax of particular elements, such as statements, expressions and commands.

1.2 Overview

T-Plan Robot Enterprise supports a proprietary scripting language allowing to write automated test scripts. It is a structured procedural language somewhat similar to shell scripting on Linux/Unix. It supports structures and elements well known from moder programming languages, such as:

As T-Plan Robot Enterprise is designed to work with most common remote and local desktop technologies, the scripting language supports commands fall into roughly four functionality areas:

  1. Desktop Commands typically involve client to server communication, such as connecting to/disconnecting from a desktop and transfer of mouse and keyboard inputs (press a key, type a text, perform a mouse move, click, drag or wheel event).
  2. Administrative And Execution Control Commands provide necessary infrastructure for test script execution control (pause, stop, desktop image analysis, waiting for a specified time period or particular event) as well as support of variables, libraries and external OS command calls.
  3. Reporting Commands define automated testing outputs and report them to the user. Commands in this category allow for example to take a screenshot of the desktop image or its part, create a report, send an E-mail or upload the test results to an associated test management tool.
  4. I/O Commands
Be aware that behavior of some commands may be customized through user preferences. Such parameters are implementation specific and do not always form part of this documentation. To explore whether there are any configurable values open the Preferences window in the T-Plan Robot EnterpriseGUI and check out whether there is a command preference panel under the Plugins section.

Though the scripting language provides a fast and easy way of automation, the language suffers from many limitations such as inability to load data from external resources, limited ways of customization or lack of object oriented approach. For this reason T-Plan Robot version 2.0 introduced Java Test Script API allowing to write test scripts in pure Java through calls of methods accessing functionality of commands specified by this reference. That is why you should refer to this specification even if you plan on sticking to Java.

1.3 Enterprise Features

As T-Plan Robot Enterprise is based on the open source T-Plan Robot, their language specifications are mostly equal. In general T-Plan Robot Enterprise just delivers additional features on top of the open source product and its language is extended with additional commands and service providers, such as report generators, image comparison algorithms and desktop clients. Scripts designed with the open source product version are always compatible with the T-Plan Robot Enterprise language. On the other hand a script designed with T-Plan Robot Enterprise may or may not to be compatible with the open source version depending on whether it uses the Enterprise language extensions.

This is a complete list of language extensions in T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1:
  1. Support of nested Java code through Java Code Blocks,
  2. Script command,
  3. Step command,
  4. Enterprise report provider under the Report command,
  5. Enhanced image search algorithm integrated with the CompareTo, Screenshot and WaitFor commands,
  6. Support of drawing image search results in the Screenshot command,
  7. Input/Output (I/O) commands such as File and Excel.

2. Language Syntax

2.1 Language Structure

T-Plan Robot Enterprise language is a text-based programming language and test scripts are typically saved as plain text files. The following general rules apply:
Test scripts are interpreted according to the following rules:
# This is a comment
Examples:
This is a text containing spaces
- Will be parsed into 6 tokens: 'This', 'is', 'a', 'text', 'containing', 'spaces'.

This "is a text" containing spaces
- Will be parsed into 4 tokens, 'This', 'is a text', 'containing', 'spaces'.

This text contains "double quote (\")"
- Will be parsed into 4 tokens, 'This', 'text', 'contains', 'double quote (")'

Variable SAMPLE_VAR_1="value with spaces" SAMPLE_VAR_2=no_spaces "NO_VAR=not_a_variable"
- Will be parsed into 4 tokens: 'Variable','SAMPLE_VAR_1="value with spaces"', 'SAMPLE_VAR_2=no_spaces' and 'NO_VAR=not_a_variable'.The second and third tokens will be further parsed into identificator/value pairs. The fourth token will not be parsed as it does not comply with the required format.
  1. The very first token is considered to be a command or procedure name and is matched against command and procedure tables. Command names are NOT case sensitive.
  1. Further processing and syntax validation is then performed by the command/procedure handlers as described below in the Command Syntax and Procedures chapters.

2.2 Time Values

Time values such as the Wait command argument and wait/timeout/delay parameters of other commands support the following syntax:
Floating point variables are acceptable in the English format only, i.e. '3.5h' will be parsed as 3.5 hrs (3 hrs 30 mins). Time values may contain numeric expressions - check the Numeric Expressions chapter for syntax.

Examples:
Wait "1.5d"
- Wait one and a half days (36 hours)

Press Ctrl+C wait=5s
- Press Ctrl+C and pause for 5 seconds.

2.3 Variables

Variables may be created through the Var and Eval commands. A variable has a case sensitive name and a value. Variables can be referred to in anywhere where dynamic content is needed (including the Var/Eval commands themselves). T-Plan Robot Enterprise's text preprocessor will replace all occurencies of {<var_name>} with the <var_name> variable value before parsing of each command line.

A typical example:

Var PATH=/tmp
Typeline "mkdir -p {PATH}; cd {PATH}"

Avoid variable names consisting of plain numbers, e.g. 'Var 1="test"'. These variables are reserved for procedure parameters and they will be rewritten by any procedure execution without any warning.

If a variable is not defined, no replacement is performed. The following example will rather type 'cd {PATH}' than 'cd /tmp' because the variable definition is commented out:

# Var PATH=/tmp
Typeline "cd {PATH}"

The preprocessor supports nested variable references. This functionality is necessary to process multiple matches of the 'search' image comparison method where coordinates of the matches are stored as _SEARCH_X_<number> and it is necessary to generate the variable names dynamically in a loop. The following example illustrates such a usage. Let's suppose that you are to search the remote desktop for an icon and you click onto each of the occurencies:

Compareto "search.png" method="search"

for (i=1; {i}<{_SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT}+1; i={i}+1) {
  # Nested variables compose the variable name from a suffix and an index
  Mouse click to=x:{_SEARCH_X_{i}},y:{_SEARCH_Y_{i}}
}

T-Plan Robot Enterprise also supports a concept of global and local variables which is similar to member class and local variables in object oriented programming (OOP). The variable type is not explicitly declared but depends on where in the code it is created:
  1. Variables created in the main script body are considered to be global and they are accessible from the moment of definition until the end of script execution.
  2. Variables created within a structured block of code (procedure, if/else and for statements) are considered to be local and they are available only within the block of code (including any nested blocks it may contain).
A local variable cannot override a global one. This means that if you run a Var or Eval command in a block of code and the variable name matches an already existing global variable, you'll rather modify the global variable than define a local one with the same name. The following example demonstrates the principles.

# Create a global variable
 Var GLOBAL=global

 if (1 == 1) {

     # Create a local variable and change the value of GLOBAL to 'modified'
     Var LOCAL=local GLOBAL=modified

     if (1 > 0) {
        Var LOCAL2=local2

         # Here GLOBAL, LOCAL and LOCAL2 are available.
         # The command will type "GLOBAL=modified, LOCAL=local, LOCAL2=local2"
         Type "GLOBAL={GLOBAL}, LOCAL={LOCAL}, LOCAL2={LOCAL2}"
    }

     # Here GLOBAL and LOCAL are available and LOCAL2 doesn't exist any more.
     # The command will type "GLOBAL=modified, LOCAL=local, LOCAL2={LOCAL2}"
     Type "GLOBAL={GLOBAL}, LOCAL={LOCAL}, LOCAL2={LOCAL2}"

}

 # Here GLOBAL is available and LOCAL and LOCAL2 don't exist any more.
 # The command will type "GLOBAL=modified, LOCAL={LOCAL}, LOCAL2={LOCAL2}"
 Type "GLOBAL={GLOBAL}, LOCAL={LOCAL}, LOCAL2={LOCAL2}"

The same rules are applied to variables defined inside scripts loaded through the Include and Run commands.

T-Plan Robot Enterprise provides a set of predefined (also called explicit) variables which may be referenced from any test script. They include various useful data, such as execution start date, desktop server host name, name of the executed script etc. For a complete list of predefined variables see the Var command specification.

Variable values may be overriden in script executions through CLI. See the -v/--variable parameter specified in the T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1 CLI Options document. This allows to parametrize particular test script executions and/or avoid exposure of sensitive information (passwords, ...) in the test script code. Redefinition of a variable from CLI makes the variable 'read only' and fixes its value for the whole time of script execution. Any Var/Eval commands modifying this variable executed in the script will be ignored and they will have no impact on the variable value. This applies to any variable including the explicit (predefined) ones.

Compatibility Note: VNCRobot formerly used regular expressions for variable substitution until version 1.2.5. Versions 1.3 and higher (including the recent T-Plan Robot 2.0) use plain text processing and version 1.3.4 also added support of nested variables (see the paragraph describing this further on). There are options in the Preferences window which allow you to disable these new feature and switch back to the 1.2.x compatibility mode. Be aware that the legacy mode requires you to avoid regexp special characters in the variable names. If you are not familiar with regular expressions, use just alphabet characters ('a'-'z', 'A'-'Z'), numbers ('0'-'9') and underscore ('_') in your variable names.

2.4 Procedures

T-Plan Robot Enterprise supports simple procedures. A procedure is a named block of language elements written in required format which can be executed by calling its name. Procedure has a header, body and terminating right curly brace. Procedure format is:

procedure <procedure_name> {
command1
command2
...
commandN
}

The left curly brace '{' must be on the same line as the procedure header. The terminating right curly brace '}' must be alone on a single line. Procedure names are not case sensitive and they must not conflict with any other command or language element name. A procedure definition overrides any eventual already defined procedure of the same name. Procedure can be called anywhere in the script AFTER its definition. Procedures defined in another test script (file) may be imported through the Include command.

It is possible to pass any number of parameters to a procedure call as follows:

<procedure_name> parameter1 "parameter2 with spaces" .... parameterN

Parameters are then available as variables with names '0', '1', ... 'N'. The first variable with index 0 always contains the procedure name. Note that parameters accepted by a procedure are not declared anywhere in the procedure header.

Number of input arguments is available from the _PROCEDURE_ARG_COUNT variable since version 2.1. It may be used for branching of behavior depending on the number of parameters or for populating of omitted parameters with default values.

The following example illustrates how to write and call a simple procedure creating a screenshot with variable image format. Note that the default value assignment (Var extension=png) must be specified after the parameter assignment (Var extension={2}) because the script otherwise reports an error. This is due to a compiler limitation which executes all variable assignments at the compile time regardless of the if/else structures to verify the correct command syntax.

# Procedure definition. Expected parameters are:
 # {1} ... file name without extension
 # {2} ... image extension (either jpg, jpeg or png). Defaults to "png" when omitted.
 procedure take_screenshot {
    Var extension={2}
    if ({_PROCEDURE_ARG_COUNT} == 1) {
        Var extension=png
    }
    Screenshot {1}.{extension} desc="This screenshot was created by procedure called {0}"
}

take_screenshot image1 jpg
take_screenshot image2

Procedures always return exit code of the last executed command within the procedure body. To exit a procedure with a specific exit code use the Exit command with the scope parameter set to procedure. An example follows:

# Procedure definition
procedure exit2 {
    Exit 2 scope=procedure
}

# Procedure call
exit2

if ({_EXIT_CODE} == 2) {
     # Any code here will be executed because exit2 returns 2
}

Procedure content is never compiled at procedure definition because without parameters it is not possible to resolve whether the code is correct or not. T-Plan Robot Enterprise compiles the procedure calls instead. If you e.g. type

take_screenshot image3 tiff

T-Plan Robot Enterprise will report an error in this line because 'tiff' is not a Java supported image format causing the Screenshot command in the example procedure body to throw a compilation error.

2.5 Numeric Expressions

Numeric expressions are supported since v1.3. The following rules apply:
Numeric expressions are accepted anywhere in the language where a number is expected, e.g.

# Wait 1 hour - in miliseconds
 Wait "1*60*60*1000"

# Search for an image and then click onto it 10 points from its left upper corner
 Compareto "pattern.png" method="search"
Mouse click to="x:{_SEARCH_X}+10,y:{_SEARCH_Y}+10"

To define a variable based on a numeric expression use the Eval command instead of the Var one, e.g. 'Eval HOUR_IN_MS=1*60*60*1000'.

2.6 Boolean Expressions

Boolean expressions facilitate constructions like if/else and for. The following operators are supported: Boolean expressions are exclusively used by the if/else and for constructions, for example

# Look for an image on the remote desktop
Compareto "pattern.png" method="search"

# Exit if the image is not found,
if ({_EXIT_CODE} > 0) {
    Exit 1
}

For more information read the If/Else Statement and For Statement chapters.

2.7 If/Else Statement

T-Plan Robot Enterprise supports if/else statements with a similar functionality and syntax used by Java. The format is:

if (<boolean expression>) {
    <commands>
} else if (<boolean expression>) {
    <commands>
} else {
    <commands>
}

The 'else if' and 'else' branches are optional. While the number of 'else if' branches is not limited, there can be just one 'else' construction. Note that the enclosing curly braces '{' and '}' must be on the same line as their associated if/else/else if keyword exactly as is displayed above. The right curly brace '}' terminating the whole structured block is the only exception and it must be alone on a single line.

Example:

# Look for an image on the remote desktop
Compareto "pattern.png" method="search"

# Exit if the image is not found,
if ({_EXIT_CODE} > 0) {
    Exit 1

# If the image was found more times, take a screenshot and add a warning to the HTML report
} else if ({_SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT} > 1) {
    Screenshot unexpected.png
    Warning "Unexpected behavior - the template image was found {_SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT} times!" image=unexpected.png
}

If/else statements can be nested and combined with other constructions like the for statement as is usual in any other structured programming language.

2.8 For Statement

T-Plan Robot Enterprise supports for statements which allows to iterate over a range of values or loop until a particular condition is satisfied. There are two general forms of the for statement.

1. Conditional For Statement
First variant of the for statement allows to execute until a boolean expression results true:

for (<statement1>; <boolean expression>; <statement2>) {
    <commands>
}

Statements statement1 and statement2 are evaluated using the Eval command and should have a syntax like '<variable>=<numeric expression>'. They can be also empty. The following examples are equivalent and loop for values of variable 'index' ranging from 0 to 5. Both code snippets will type '012345':

for (index=0; {index}<6; index={index}+1) {
    Type {index}
}

Eval index=0
for ( ; {index} < 6; ) {
    Type {index}
    Eval index={index}+1
}

2. For Statement Iterating over a Predefined Set of Values
This form allows to iterate over a predefined set of values:

for <variable name> in <list of space separated values> {
    <commands>
}

The following example will type a sentence "I speak English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese."

Type "I speak "
for language in English Spanish "Brazilian Portuguese" {
    if ("{language}" == "Brazilian Portuguese") {
        Type "{language}."
    } else {
        Type "{language}, "
    }
}

Execution of the for statement can be interrupted by a break command. If there are nested loops, the break command will always interrupt the innermost for statement. The following example illustrates how to use a combination of for and Waitfor to hold on execution until the remote desktop stops to update.

# Infinite loop
 for (; 0 == 0; ) {

     # Wait for at least 20% update of the remote screen.
     # If it doesn't update for 10 seconds, break the loop.
     Waitfor update extent=20% timeout="10s" ontimeout="break"
}

2.9 Return Values

Since v1.3 all commands return an integer value which is available as a variable called _EXIT_CODE. Value of 0 (zero) usually means success while any other number indicates a failure. See documentation of particular commands for defined exit code values and their meanings.

Return values (also called "exit codes") can be effectively used to control the script execution and define how to handle both expected and unexpected results. The Compareto command e.g. returns 0 when image comparison passes and non-zero value otherwise. The Waitfor command returns 0 when the expected event is received and non-zero value when timeout is reached. The following example illustrates how to use these return values.

# Alt+F2 opens the Run Program window on Gnome
 Press Alt+F2 wait=3s

 # Start the Gnome Text Editor
 Typeline gnome-text-editor

# Wait for the remote desktop update
 Waitfor update extent=30% timeout="10s"

 # If Waitfor returns non-zero value, the timeout was reached
 # and the text editor probably failed to open
 if ({_EXIT_CODE} > 0) {

     # Take a screenshot
     Screenshot failure.png

    # Send the screenshot via E-mail to the tester
     Sendmail to="tester@dummyserver.com" from="robot@dummyserver.com" server="mail.dummyserver.com" subject="Gnome editor failed to open!" attach="{_REPORT_DIR}/failure.png"

     # Pause the execution and wait for the tester to fix it
     Pause "Paused because Gnome Text Editor failed to start"
}

Note that the if/else, for and break calls do not return any value. If you access the _EXIT_CODE variable after one of these commands, it will rather contain exit code of the last previously executed command.


2.10 Java Code Blocks

Java code blocks allow to call Java code directly from regular scripts. It was designed to support cases when it is desired to stick to the scripting language but a certain custom functionality is needed.

To make Java code blocks work properly make sure to run Robot on a JDK through the "java -classpath <libs> com.tplan.robot.ApplicationSupport" command rather than the "java -jar robot.jar" one. The latter syntax fails to populate the class path for the Java compiler on some environments which results in failures to compile and execute Java source code. See the Startup chapter of the Release Notes document for more information.

General syntax of a Java code block:

java {
  <Java code>
} endjava

Each such a block is internally converted to a Java test script extending DefaultJavaTestScript class and the Java code inside the block is inserted into its test() method. The class template is exposed in the Java code block configuration and may be customized through the Preferences window. The following example shows an example:

Java Code Block
Resulting Java Test Script Class
java {
  System.out.println("Hello world!");
} endjava		              
import com.tplan.robot.scripting.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class SomeDynamicName extends DefaultJavaTestScript {
   public void test() {
       System.out.println("Hello world!");
   }
}
This mechanism has a few practical impacts:
The following example illustrates sharing of variables. The script first sets the template path to "C:/templates". The Java code retrieves the path through the context, lists all PNG files in the directory and stores them as numbered variables called FILE<n> together with the file counter FILECNT to the context variables. When the regular test script resumes, it iterates over the listed files and performs image comparison against each PNG file.

Var _TEMPLATE_DIR="C:\templates"

# This line declares dummy values of variables populated by the Java code.
 # It prevents the compiler from reporting error in the for() loop and CompareTo command.
 Var FILECNT=0 FILE1=dummy.png

java {
         File files[] = getContext().getTemplateDir().listFiles();
         int i = 0;
         for (File file : files) {
             if (file.isFile() && file.getName().endsWith(".png")) {
                 i++;
                 getContext().setVariable("FILE"+i, file.getName());
             }
         }
         getContext().setVariable("FILECNT", Integer.toString(i));
} endjava

for (i=1; {i}<{FILECNT}+1; i={i}+1) {
  Compareto "{FILE{i}}" method=search
}



3. Command Syntax

T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1 supports the following commands:

3.1 Desktop Commands 3.2 Administrative & Execution Control Commands 3.3 Reporting Commands

3.4 Reporting Commands


3.1 Desktop Commands


3.1.1 Connect

DESCRIPTION
Connect - Connect to a desktop. The protocol, host name or IP address and optional port are specified in the argument URL. If a connection gets established, impilicit variables _MACHINE and _DISPLAY are updated.

SYNOPSIS
connect <URL> [user=<user>] [password=<password>] [force=<false|true>] [onpass=<command>] [onfail=<command>] [params=<parameters>] [paramseparator=<delimeter>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
URL

- The argument must be a valid URL in form of <protocol>://<host_or_IP>[:<port>] except the legacy format described below. The protocol must be equal to one of the supported protocol codes. T-Plan Robot by default supports RFB v3.3 (better known as VNC, code "rfb"). The Enterprise version also supports a Java native client ("java") allowing to access either a local display directly or a remote one over RMI. As T-Plan Robot provides an interface allowing to plug in other clients, there might be more protocols supported by additional plugins.

If port is not explicitly specified, it defaults to the protocol-specific well known port. For example, RFB/VNC server runs by default on port 5900, Java RMI starts  by on port 1099 and RDP (Windows Terminal Services) default to 3389. If you want to connect to a VNC running on Linux/Unix, you typically have to specify the port of 5901 or higher because the default RFB port is occupied by the X-Windows server.

Be aware that URL interpretation may be client specific. For example, "java://localhost" makes the Java native client to attach directly to the local system screen buffer and there's no TCP/IP communication involved. Any other "java" URL will however connect over TCP/IP to an RMI registry running on the specified host and port in order to attach to screen buffer of the host machine. Refer to documentation of particular clients for more information.

If protocol is omitted in the URL, the host defaults to the RFB (VNC) protocol to provide backward compatibility with VNCRobot 1.x. Port number is in this case considered to be a display number rather than real port. To get the port number add the display number to 5900. Direct port can be in this mode specified through double colon, for example both "localhost:1" and "localhost::5901" refer to the same local VNC server running on port 5901. To specify the same address in the standard URL form one has to list the real port specifically and the equivalent URL is "rfb://localhost:5901".

The connect method supports by default just servers with either none or a plain user/password authentication. Clients requiring custom authentication schemes may take advantage of the params and paramseparator options to pass the necessary logon data. Parameters and their expected values must be specified by the client.

user=<username>

- User name (ID) to authenticate to the desktop server. If server is configured not to require authentication or doesn't use the user name at all (such as RFB), the parameter is ignored.

password=<password>

- Password to authenticate to the desktop server. If server is configured not to require password, this parameter is ignored.

params=<param_name_and_value_pairs>

- Custom client parameters. This option allows to pass any custom parameter to a custom client, for example logon data needed for other than plain user/password authentication. The list may contain any number of parameter name and value pairs separated by comma (',') or a custom separator specified by the paramseparator argument. For example, to specify two parameters PARAM_A=value_A and PARAM_B=value_B the argument should look like "PARAM_A,value_A,PARAM_B,value_B".

Note that this is a generic mechanism to allow future client implementations to load custom parameters. The two built in RFB and Java clients do not support at the moment any custom parameters.

paramseparator=<delimeter>

- Optional separator for the list of parameter names and values specified by the params argument. If it is not specified, it defaults to comma (",").

force=<false|true>

- If T-Plan Robot is already connected to the same server and display as is defined in the command, no reconnection is performed (force=false). If you want to force T-Plan Robot to terminate current connection and reconnect to the server, set this parameter to true. Default value is false.

onpass=<command>

- A command to be executed when T-Plan Robot successfuly connects to the server. It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of commands to be executed, use either a procedure or a subsequent if/else construction.

onfail=<command>

- A command to be executed when T-Plan Robot fails to connect to the server. It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of commands to be executed, use either a procedure or a subsequent if/else construction.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) on success or 1 when it fails to connect for unspecified reason. The command returns a value of 10 when connection fails on an unsupported authentication method.

EXAMPLES
Connect rfb://localhost:5901 password=test
Connect localhost:1 password=test
Connect localhost::5901 password=test

- All three examples are equal and connect to a VNC server running on display number 1 (port 5901) of the local machine. Password authentication is expected. This is typical for Linux/Unix systems where port 5900 is usually occupied by X-Windows server and VNC servers usually runs on ports 5901 and higher.

Connect rfb://mywindows.companyxy.com:5902 password=mypassword force=true onfail="exit 2"

- Connect to an RFB (VNC) server running on server called mywindows.companyxy.com. If the tool is already connected to this server, terminate the session and reconnect. If connection fails, terminate execution of the script with an exit code of 2.

Connect java://localhost

- Connect to the local system display buffer directly using Java native client (Enterprise version only). This is just an illustrative example because Java client support has not yet been released.

Connect java://testmachine:1099

- Connect to display buffer of host called testmachine over RMI using Java native client (Enterprise version only). The machine must run the Java RMI registry on port 1099 as is specified in the Java client documentation. This is just an illustrative example because Java client support has not yet been released.

Connect rdp://winhost

- Connect to host winhost using RDP. This is just an illustrative example because RDP support is not yet implemented.


3.1.2 Disconnect

DESCRIPTION
Disconnect - Disconnect from a desktop server. If there's no connection, the command does nothing. When the connection gets closed, predefined variables _MACHINE and _DISPLAY are cleared.

SYNOPSIS
disconnect

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) on success or 1 when it fails to disconnect.

EXAMPLES
Disconnect

- Disconnect from the currently connected desktop.


3.1.3 Press

DESCRIPTION
Press - Send a key to the desktop. It is analogical to pressing a key on the keyboard.

SYNOPSIS
press [<modifier_1>+...+<modifier_N>+]<key | modifier> [location=<standard|numpad|left|right>] [count=<number>] [wait=<time>]

* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
modifier

- Any combination of modifiers Shift, Alt and Ctrl separated by the plus '+' sign, e.g. 'Ctrl+Alt+Shift'. Modifier names are not case sensitive.

key

- Name of the keyboard key to press. Most key names correspond to what is written on the keyboard, e.g. 'A', 'Insert', 'Tab' etc. The key may also consist of modifiers only. Keys are not case sensitive and may be specified in any character case.

Key names are internally derived from the VK_ key code constants declared in the java.awt.event.KeyEvent class where the identifier itself is the string after the VK_ prefix. For example, as there is a VK_ENTER constant, the key name may be "ENTER", "Enter" or "enter". As the names are in fact extracted from the KeyEvent class at runtime using Java Reflection API, the range of supported keys may differ depending on the version of Java used to execute T-Plan Robot. A complete map of the supported key names may be obtained through the Supported Keys Window.

Be aware that the names map rather to particular physical keys and not to the characters they represent. For example, pressing of the standard '-' minus key generates a different internal key code than the one on numpad. These two cases may be also represented by two Press commands, "Press -" (standard) and "Press SUBTRACT location=numpad" (numpad). In most cases the target system interprets them in the same way but there may be situations when it fails. For example, control plus ("Press Ctrl++") is generated as a sequence of [press Ctrl, press '+', release '+', release Ctrl]. As such a key combination is impossible to create on a US keyboard where one needs to press Shift as well to get the standard '+' ASCII character (0x2b), this sequence may or may not be interpreted correctly by the desktop. If the key is not recognized try using the numpad one instead ("Press Ctrl+ADD location=numpad"). To get the key name for your particular numpad key open the Supported Keys Window and press it while the focus is on the "Press a key.." text field. It is recommended to specify the location=numpad parameter though it may also work without it.

The command accepts besides key names also most plain ASCII characters since 2.0.3. It is possible to use commands like "Press * " or "Press @". In addition it supports mapping of these characters onto the numeric keyboard through the localion="numpad" parameter. For example, pressing of the "0" key on the numeric keypad required to call "Press NUMPAD0" while the new version also supports more intuitive "Press 0 location=numpad". This also applies to other numpad keys such as ADD (mapped to plus, '+'), SUBTRACT (minus, '-'), MULTIPLY (asterisk, '*' ), DIVIDE (slash, '/'), DECIMAL (period, '.') and SEPARATOR (comma ',' ).

Transferable keys and key combinations are further on subject to limitations applied by the desktop client (protocol). For example the RFB (VNC) protocol cannot transfer characters outside of the Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) character set and support of Windows native keys such as Win and ContextMenu is supported just by some products. On contrary the native Java client can transfer only characters which can be generated on the local keyboard regardless of the character set they belong to. Read the Release Notes and particular client documentation for more information.

location=<standard|numpad|left|right>

- Key location. This option makes sense only with keys which are present on a typical keyboard more than once. Examples of such keys are the digit keys '0'-'9' (standard location and num pad) or modifier keys (Ctrl and Alt on the keyboard left and right). Supported location values are standard (default), numpad, left and right.

Note that the command doesn't verify whether the [key,location] pair makes sense. For example, alphabet characters are present on most keyboard just once and the only logically valid location is the default standard one. Most clients however use the location only as a hint and ignore it by keys where it is not applicable.

count=<number>

- How many times the key should be sent. Default value is 1. Delays among multiple press actions are defined by a value in the Press Command user preferences.

wait=<time>

- Time to wait after the events are sent. It has the same effect as if the following command was 'Wait <time_in_ms>'. This parameter is useful if the server needs some time to react on the pressed key/keys. A plain number is by default parsed as miliseconds. See the syntax of time values paragraph for more time formats.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) on success or 1 when it fails.

EXAMPLES
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del

- Press the Ctrl+Alt+Del key on the desktop.

Press Tab count=5 wait=2s

- Simulate pressing of the Tab key five times and then wait for two seconds before proceeding to the next command.

Press Ctrl location=right

- Press the right Ctrl key.

Var KEY_TO_PRESS=Alt+F4
<...>
Waitfor update area=x:340,y:220,w:240,h:160 extent=80% timeout=10s ontimeout="Var KEY_TO_PRESS=Right"
Press {KEY_TO_PRESS} wait=2s

- This example illustrates how to solve the unwanted popup windows. If a window pops up at the given coordinates, the 'Press {KEY_TO_PRESS}' command ensures that it gets closed using Alt+F4. If the window doesn't show up, the Alt key gets pressed which usually doesn't cause any harm to the window.

3.1.4 Type, Typeline

DESCRIPTION
Type, Typeline - Send a text to the desktop server. These two commands are analogical to typing the text on user keyboard. Typeline is just a convenience command which types the text and then presses Enter, i.e. it has the same effect as a combination of 'Type <text>' and 'Press Enter'.

SYNOPSIS
type <text> [wait=<time>] [count=<number>]
typeline <text> [wait=<time>] [count=<number>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
text

- Text to type. If the text contains spaces or equal signs '=', it must be enclosed in double quotes, e.g. "This is a text containing spaces". If you need to include the double quote character into your text, place a leading backslash before it, e.g. "This is double quote - \"". If you need to display a backslash followed by a double quote, use '\\"', e.g. "This is a backslash followed by a double quote - \\"".

Supported text characters are subject to limitations applied by the desktop client (protocol). For example the RFB (VNC) protocol cannot transfer characters outside of the Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) character set. On contrary the native Java client can transfer only characters which can be generated on the local keyboard regardless of the character set they belong to. Read the particular client documentation for more information. 

wait=<time>

- Time to wait after the text gets typed. It has the same effect as if the following command was 'Wait <time_in_ms>'. This parameter is useful if the server needs some time to react on the pressed key/keys. A plain number is by default parsed as miliseconds. See the syntax of time values paragraph for more time formats.

location=<standard|numpad|left|right>

- Key location. When specified the command makes an attempt to map the typed characters onto the specififed keyboard location. Though supported location values are standard (default), numpad, left and right, this option makes sense only with the numeric pad which is the only keyboard part containing characters accepted by the command.

Support of this parameter is intended to make testing of mobile devices easier. Numeric keys on mobile devices (especially mobile phones) are often mapped to numpad keys and it is inconvenient to handle each key press through the Press command. For example, to type and call a phone number +0123456789 on the mobile one can simply use "Typeline +0123456789 location=numpad" .

count=<number>

- How many times the command should be repeated. Default value is 1.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) on success or 1 when it fails.

EXAMPLES
Type hello

- Type 'hello'.

Typeline "mkdir /tmp/mydir" wait=2s

- If you run this in an active Linux/Unix terminal window, it will invoke the 'mkdir /tmp/mydir' OS command and wait for two seconds before proceeding to the next command.

Type "100*4" location=numpad

- Type the formula on the numeric keyboard.

Typeline "+111222333444" location=numpad

- Type the formula on the numeric keyboard and press Enter. When the system under test is a mobile device with keyboard mapped onto the num pad such as a Nokia phone with Symbian OS, it will place a call to the specified number.

3.1.5 Mouse

DESCRIPTION
Mouse - Generate a mouse event. This command can simulate a wide range of mouse actions like mouse pointer movement, mouse click, press, release, drag and mouse wheel events. The command also supports custom drags composed of a sequence of mouse press, mouse move and mouse release events (since 2.0.2). Should you see any composed events (clicks, drags) failing, see the Mouse command preferences for calibration parameters.

Current mouse pointer coordinates are available in the script through the _MOUSE_X and _MOUSE_Y dynamic variables since version 2.1.

SYNOPSIS
mouse [<modifier_1>+...+<modifier_N>+]<event_id> [btn=<button_name>] [modifiers=<modifier_1>+...+<modifier_N>] [to=[x:<x>][,y:<y>]] [from=[x:<x>][,y:<y>]] [count=<number>] [wait=<time>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
modifier

- Any combination of modifiers Shift, Alt and Ctrl separated by the plus '+' sign, e.g. 'Ctrl+Alt+Shift'.

event_id

- Supported event IDs are:

btn

- This parameter is used to identify the mouse button to click, press, release or drag with. Allowed values are "left", "middle" and "right".

modifiers

- This parameter provides an alternative way of specifying the mouse event modifiers (the other way is to place modifiers before the event ID). The value may be any combination of Shift, Alt and Ctrl separated by the plus '+' sign, e.g. "Ctrl+Alt+Shift". If modifiers are specified with the event ID as well, this parameter prevails.

to=[x:<x>][,y:<y>]

- Destination coordinates.

The coordinates have format of 'x:<x>,y:<y>', where each coordinate can be specified in pixels (e.g. 'x:225') or as a percentage (e.g. 'x:23%'). If x or y is omitted, the current mouse pointer location will be used to determine the missing coordinate.

from=[x:<x>][,y:<y>]

- Start coordinates.

The coordinates have format of 'x:<x>,y:<y>', where each coordinate can be specified in pixels (e.g. 'x:225') or relatively as a percentage (e.g. 'x:23.5%'). Relative coordinates are rounded if they are not integer. If x or y is omitted, the current mouse pointer location will be used to determine the missing coordinate.

count=<number>

- How many times the mouse event should be sent. Default value is 1. This value makes sense only with the click event.

wait=<time>

- Time to wait after the events are sent. It has the same effect as if the following command was 'Wait <time>'. A plain number is by default parsed as miliseconds. See the syntax of time values paragraph for more time formats.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) on success or 1 when it fails.

EXAMPLES
Mouse click count=2

- Perform a mouse double click at the current mouse pointer coordinates.

Mouse move to=x:25,y:122

- Move the mouse pointer to the given coordinates

Mouse move to=x:{_MOUSE_X}+50

- Move the mouse pointer 50 pixels to the right from its current position.

Mouse drag from=x:10%,y:450 to=x:22.5%,y:450 wait=2s

- Drag the mouse pointer from the given start position to the destination position and wait for two seconds. The x coordinate is given in the relative form. If your display resolution is e.g. 800x600 pixels, the 'x:10%' will be equal to 'x:60' and 'x:22.5%' will be 'x:135'.

Compareto "icon.png" method=search onfail="Exit 1"
Mouse move to=x:{_SEARCH_X}+10,y:{_SEARCH_Y}+10
Mouse press
Mouse move to=x:{_SEARCH_X}+110 wait=500
Mouse release

- Example of a "composed drag" applied to an object located through image comparison. The snippet first searches the desktop for an object represented by the icon.png template. If it is found, the mouse pointer is moved to the area (plus ten pixels in each direction) and the object is dragged 100 pixels to the right using a sequence of press, move and release events.

3.2 Administrative & Execution Control Commands


3.2.1. Var

DESCRIPTION
Var - Define a script variable. See the Variables chapter for general description of script variable support.

Variables starting with underscore ('_') are predefined variables. They are typically provided by T-Plan Robot or by its commands and contain useful values providing information about the execution context. They are not processed in any special way so you are free to use them and modify them as you wish. A table of the most important ones follows.

Who Creates and When Variable Name Description
T-Plan Robot when
a the client receives
a clipboard change from
desktop server
 _SERVER_CLIPBOARD_CONTENT=<text>
 Content of the remote desktop clipboard. Note that ability to transfer
text to the clipboard is subject to client capabilities. This variable is
typically used together with the Waitfor clipboard command.
T-Plan Robot when
a script execution
is started or when a
script is compiled.		 _DATE=<yyyyMMdd> Date of the execution start in the "yyyyMMdd" format.
For example, May 8, 2005 will be defined as "20050508". The format may
be customized in the Language panel of user preferences.
To get the current date see the _CURDATE variable below.
_TIME=<HHmmss> Time of the execution start in the "HHmmss" 24-hrs. format.
For example, 3:10:33 pm will be defined as "151033". The format may be
customized in the Language panel of user preferences. To get the current
time in miliseconds see the _CURTIME variable below. Should you need
formatted version of current time use _CURDATE with a custom format.
_FILE=<file> Absolute path of the executed script, e.g. "/root/test.txt".
_FILENAME=<filename>
 Script file name, e.g. "test.txt".
_REPORT_DIR=<path>
 Target directory for screenshots and reports. The default value
is the user home folder and it is configurable in user preferences
(Language panel). All screenshots and reports
will be saved to this directory unless they are specified via absolute path.
_TEMPLATE_DIR=<path>
 Source directory containing template images for image comparison.
The default value is the user home folder and it is configurable
in user preferences (Language panel). Commands employing image
comparison will search this directory for all templates specified
by relative path.
_SCRIPT_DIR=<path>
 Directory where the currently executed script is located (absolute path).
_WARNING_COUNT=<number>
 Number of warnings which have been generated by the Warning
command during the script execution.
_CURDATE_FORMAT=<format>
 Date/time format for the _CURDATE dynamic variable. It must  be a string
complying with the java.text.SimpleDateFormat specification. For example,
setting the variable to "yyyy" will cause any later use of _CURDATE to
produce "2010" (the current year in 4-digit format). Setting of this
variable to empty string will revert the format to the default value.
_RANDOM_MIN=<integer_number>
_RANDOM_MAX=<integer_number>		 Minimum and maximum values for the random value generator
used for the dynamic variable _RANDOM. Default values are 1 and
100000.
_RGB_X=<x_coordinate>
_RGB_Y=<y_coordinate>		 Coordinates used to retrieve RGB from the desktop image. See the _RGB
dynamic variable below.
T-Plan Robot whenever
the variable is used. As values
of these variables are created
at the time of the variable call,
they are called "dynamic
variables".
 _CURTIME=<time_in_miliseconds>
 Whenever this variable is used, it is dynamically replaced by
the current system time in miliseconds since midnight
of January 1, 1970 UTC. You may use this variable to calculate
how long a command or a block of commands took to execute or
to measure performance of the remote system.
_CURDATE=<formatted_time_and_date>
 Produces a readable current time and/or date. The format may be
specified in script through the _CURDATE_FORMAT variable. If the
variable is not set the format defaults to the value in user configuration
(see the Language panel of user preferences). If neither the preference
is set the format defaults to the default Java one produced by
java.util.Date().toString().
_MOUSE_X=<X_coordinate>
_MOUSE_Y=<Y_coordinate>		 Return current mouse pointer X, Y coordinates. If the tool is not connected
to a desktop or no mouse event has been registered yet since the connection,
the coordinates return [0, 0].
_RANDOM=<random_integer>
 Whenever used the variable produces a random integer number.
The range is by default set to [1, 100000] and may be changed through
the _RANDOM_MIN and _RANDOM_MAX variables (see above).
_RGB=<RGB_color> Whenever used the variable retrieves current color of the desktop
image pixel pointed to by coordinates specified by the _RGB_X and
_RGB_Y variables. The pixel value is returned in HTML-style format string,
6 characters long, with R, G, B components specified in this order as
lower case hexadecimal values (2 characters per component).
For example the white color of RGB(255, 255, 255) is presented as "ffffff"
while the green color of RGB (0, 255, 0) produces "00ff00".
T-Plan Robot when
a script execution
is started. Also updated by
Connect and Disconnect
commands.
 _MACHINE=<servername> Desktop server machine name to which T-Plan Robot is connected.
The variable is empty if there is no connection.
_PORT=<portnumber> Desktop server port number. If the connected desktop doesn't
use a TCP/IP connection (such as drivers attached directly to
local displays), the variable is empty.
_PROTOCOL=<protocolname>
 Name of protocol used for desktop connection, for example "rfb" or "java".
_URL=<desktop_url>
 Desktop URL containing protocol, machine (host) name and optionally
port number.
_DESKTOP_WIDTH=<width_in_pixels> Width of the currently connected remote desktop (in pixels).
_DESKTOP_HEIGHT=<width_in_pixels> Height of the currently connected remote desktop (in pixels).
RFB (VNC) Client
when connected or
disconnected
 _DISPLAY=<servername>:[<display#>] Display variable which is useful for display redirection
on Unix/Linux systems. It is in the "server:port" format,
e.g. "mymachine:2" defines a machine called 'mymachine'
running a VNC server on port 5902.
The variable is empty if there is no VNC connection.
Waitfor command
when an update event
complying with
the given criteria occurs
_X=<number_in_pixels>
 The 'x' coordinate of the last update event that met the criteria.
_Y=<number_in_pixels> The 'y' coordinate of the last update event that met the criteria.
_W=<number_in_pixels> The 'width' coordinate of the last update event that met the criteria.
_H=<number_in_pixels> The 'height' coordinate of the last update event that met the criteria.
Waitfor command after
every execution
_TIMEOUT=<true|false> If timeout is defined and reached, the Waitfor command will set
this variable to 'true', otherwise to 'false'.
Report command
whenever a report gets
generated
 _REPORT_FILE=<file> Report file (absolute path), e.g. '/root/report.html'.
_REPORT_FILENAME=<filename> Report file name, e.g. 'report.html'.
Compareto command,
Screenshot
comparisons and
'Waifor match' calls
 _COMPARETO_TEMPLATE=<file>
 Image file (absolute path) used for last image comparison.
_COMPARETO_RESULT=<number>
 Comparison result percentage. It is always a number between 0
and 100. It indicates how much the images matched.
_COMPARETO_PASS_RATE=<number>
 Pass rate percentage used for the last image comparsion. It is
always a number between 0 and 100.
_COMPARETO_TIME_IN_MS=<milliseconds>
 Time in miliseconds spent by the image comparison. If there's a list
of templates, the value represents a summary time of all performed
comparisons.
_COMPARETO_TEMPLATE_INDEX=<number>
 Index of the template in the template list which produced the pass
result. Indexing starts from zero.
_COMPARETO_TEMPLATE_WIDTH=<number>
_COMPARETO_TEMPLATE_HEIGHT=<number>		 Width and height of the last compared template image (in pixels). If the
comparison passed, the variables contain dimensions of the matching
template image. Supported since 2.0.2.
Compareto command,
Screenshot
comparisons and
'Waifor match' calls
when "search" comparison
method is used
 _SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT=<number>
 Number of matches found. It is always an integer greater than
or equal to zero.
_SEARCH_X=<number> The 'x' coordinate of the first match. If the template image was
not found, the value is -1.
_SEARCH_Y=<number> The 'y' coordinate of the first match. If the template image was
not found, the value is -1.
_SEARCH_X_<n>=<number>
_SEARCH_Y_<n>=<number>
 The 'x' and 'y' coordinates of the n-th match where n is between
1 and value of _SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT.
Exec command after
every execution		 _EXEC_OUTPUT=<text>
 Standard output of the executed command, i.e. messages which
are printed into the console.
_EXEC_ERROR=<text> Error output of the executed command, i.e. error messages which
are printed into the console.
_EXEC_COMMAND=<command> Last executed OS command, i.e. the Exec argument.
_EXEC_VALUE=<number>
 Integer exit code of the executed OS command.

You may use the Variable Browser window to view the list of variables which are present in the current execution repository.

SYNOPSIS
var <var_name_1>=<value_1> [<var_name_2>=<value_2> ... <var_name_N>=<value_N>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
var_name

- A name for the variable. The name is case sensitive and must not contain spaces.

value

- Variable value. If the value contains spaces, it must be enclosed in double quotes, e.g. "This is a text containing spaces". If you need to include the double quote character into your variable value, place a leading backslash before it, e.g. "This is a double quote \"". If you need to include a backslash followed by a double quote, use '\\"', e.g. "This is a backslash followed by a double quote - \\"".

RETURNS
The Var command always returns 0 (zero).

EXAMPLES
Var PATH=/tmp  path=/tmp  DESCRIPTION="Path to change to"  EMPTY=

- Create four variables PATH, path, DESCRIPTION and EMPTY with the given values.

Compareto "search.png" method="search"

 for (i=1; {i}<{_SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT}+1; i={i}+1) {
  # Nested variables compose the variable names of a suffix and an index
   Mouse click to=x:{_SEARCH_X_{i}},y:{_SEARCH_Y_{i}}
}

- An example of nested variable references searching the remote desktop image for an icon represented by the template image search.png and clicking onto each of the occurencies.

3.2.2. Eval

DESCRIPTION
Eval - Define a script variable where the value is evaluated as numeric expression. See the Numeric Expressions chapter of this manual for more info. The behavior is otherwise exactly the same as the Var command.

SYNOPSIS
eval <var_name_1>=<numeric_expression_1> [<var_name_2>=<numeric_expression_2> ... <var_name_N>=<numeric_expression_N>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
var_name

- A name for the variable. The name is case sensitive and must not contain spaces.

numeric_expression

- A numeric expression. If the expression contains spaces, it must be enclosed in double quotes, e.g. "1 + 1". See the Numeric Expressions chapter of this manual for more info on expression syntax and supported numeric operators.

RETURNS
The Eval command always returns 0 (zero).

EXAMPLES
Eval POSITION=2*(10+1)

- Create a variable POSITION with a value of 22.


3.2.3 Include

DESCRIPTION
Include - Include another script. This will load ONLY procedures and variables from the script into the execution context. Use this command to link libraries containing globally used variables and procedures.

The name of the included file can be also specified dynamically through a variable. This allows to configure the script with e.g. variables or procedures from another file which can be passed via the '-v' CLI command.

SYNOPSIS
include <file>
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
file

- A file to be included. File name can be either relative (e.g. sayHello.tpr) or absolute (e.g. /root/scripts/sayHello.tpr). T-Plan Robot will check if the file exists and is readable during every script compilation and report an error if not. The file can be also specified via a variable (see examples).

RETURNS
The command always returns 0 (zero). If the specified file is not found, T-Plan Robot reports a syntax error rather than returning a non-zero return value.

EXAMPLES
Include sayHello.tpr

- Load all variables and procedures from a script called sayHello.tpr which is located in the same directory as the script calling this command.


Include /root/scripts/sayHello.tpr

- Load all variables and procedures from a script called sayHello.tpr which is located in the /root/scripts/ directory.


 Var PROFILE=profile1.tpr
Include {PROFILE}

- Include a script specified by a variable. If you have more scripts with different configurations, you may then include another script from CLI using '-v PROFILE=profile2.tpr'.


3.2.4 Run

DESCRIPTION
Run - Execute another script. T-Plan Robot will process its commands as if they were written in the calling script, which means that all procedures, variables, screenshots and report generators defined by the executed script will remain in the execution repository and can be accessed once the Run command finishes.

Run commands can be effectively used to implement generic snippets of code (libraries) or to separate test code of individual test cases. Exit command with scope set to file can be used to return from a script executed through Run to the main script.

SYNOPSIS
run <file>
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
file

- A file to be executed. File name can be either relative (e.g. sayHello.tpr) or absolute (e.g. /root/scripts/sayHello.tpr). T-Plan Robot will check if the file exists and is readable during every script validation and report an error if not. The file can be also specified via a variable (see examples).

RETURNS
Run always returns the code returned by the last executed command. If the specified file is not found, T-Plan Robot reports a syntax error rather than returning a non-zero return value.

EXAMPLES
Run sayHello.tpr

- Execute a script called sayHello.tpr which is located in the same directory as the script calling this command.


Run /root/scripts/sayHello.tpr

- Execute a script called sayHello.tpr which is located in the /root/scripts/ directory.


 Var SCRIPT_TO_EXECUTE=sayHello.tpr
Run {SCRIPT_TO_EXECUTE}

- Execute a script specified by a variable.



3.2.5 Pause

DESCRIPTION
Pause - Pause the script execution. If T-Plan Robot is executing in GUI mode, the Pause button/menu item get selected and user can deselect the button or the menu item to resume the execution. If the script is being executed in CLI mode, a message is printed out into the console and user can press a key to resume the execution.

The Pause command can be used e.g. to pause execution when a runaway behavior is detected. Though the usual way is to exit the script with an error exit code (e.g. 'Exit 1'), some test suites may prefer to send an E-mail to the responsible person, pause the execution and wait for human help.

SYNOPSIS
pause <description>

OPTIONS
description

- Optional description of the reason why the script was paused. This description will be displayed in the report (if defined) and printed out to the console in case of CLI mode execution.

RETURNS
The command always returns 0 (zero).

EXAMPLES
Compareto "application.png"
if ({_EXIT_CODE} > 0) {
    # Cry for help - send a screenshot via E-mail and pause
    Screenshot runaway.png
   Sendmail to="tester@dummyserver.com" from="robot@dummyserver.com" server="mail.dummyserver.com" subject="Runaway behavior detected - see attached picture. Please help!" attach="{_REPORT_DIR}/runaway.png"
    Pause "Runaway behavior detected"
}

- When image comparison fails, send a screenshot by E-mail to the tester and pause the execution.



3.2.6 Exit

DESCRIPTION
Exit - Terminate the script, procedure or structured block of code and return an exit code. If an exit command with the 'process' scope is called during script execution, it will terminate T-Plan Robot and return the indicated exit code to the underlying operating system. See documentation on T-Plan Robot CLI Options and its automatic script execution examples for more information.

SYNOPSIS
exit  <exit_code_number>  [scope=<process|file|procedure|block>]

OPTIONS
exit_code_number

- Exit code. It must be an integer. A value of zero is usually used to indicate success while non-zero values indicate an error or unexpected result or behavior. If the command is used to terminate T-Plan Robot, the exit code is passed to the underlying operating system and can be used to identify the reason of the script termination.

scope=<process|file|procedure|block>
- Controls scope of the exit command. The default value is process which terminates the script execution. If the execution is an automated one and there are no more running automated processes, the command also terminates the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and returns the specified exit code to the underlying operating system.

The file value terminates the currently executed file. If a script is being executed from another script using the Run command, only the called script is terminated and control is returned to the master script.

The procedure value exits from the innermost procedure. If no procedure is executed, the Exit command is ignored.

The block value exits from the innermost structured block of code, i.e. one of the if/else of for statements. If the command gets called out of any such a statement, it is ignored.

RETURNS
The command returns the exit code which is specified as its argument.

EXAMPLES
Exit 10

- Terminate the executed script and return 10 as the exit code.

Typeline myapplication
Waitfor update extent=40% timeout=20s ontimeout="Exit 2" cumulative=true

- This is a typical usage of the Exit command. It shows a situation when you start a GUI application called myapplication from a terminal window. Let's suppose that the myapplication window has a fixed size equal to at least 40% of the screen size. If the GUI starts properly, the script will continue. The Waitfor command will otherwise wait for 20 seconds and then terminate the test script with an exit code of 2.


3.2.7 Wait

DESCRIPTION
Wait - Wait for a specified amount of time. Use this command to pause the script execution for a specified period of time.

SYNOPSIS
wait <time>
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
time

- Time to wait before proceeding to the next command. It must be a number greater than zero. A plain number is by default interpreted as miliseconds. See syntax of time values for specification of time formats.

RETURNS
The command always returns 0 (zero).

EXAMPLES
Wait 30000
 Wait 30s
Wait 0.5m

- All three commands are equivalent and make the script wait for 30 seconds (aka 30,000 miliseconds or half a minute) before proceeding to the next command.

3.2.8 Waitfor

DESCRIPTION
Waitfor - Pause execution of a script and wait for an RFB event or state of the remote desktop image. Currently supported events are screen update, bell (desktop server emited a beep through printing of the ASCII character 0x07), delivery of text copied on the remote system (desktop server clipboard change) and match/mismatch (waiting for a positive or negative image comparison result).

Support of particular events is subject to client (protocol) capabilities. T-Plan Robot has an open and flexible architecture allowing to plug in clients with just a subset of capabilities commonly provided by remote desktop technologies. If a Waitfor event is not supported by the client, T-Plan Robot reports a syntax error. The following table lists capabilities of the two default T-Plan Robot v2.0 clients:

Waitfor Event
 RFB Client ("rfb") Java Client ("java", Enterprise version only)
Screen update
 Yes
 No (Java technology limitation, passive polling
of screen image only)
Bell
 Yes
 No (Java technology limitation)
Clipboard changes
 Yes (requires vncconfig or autocutsel
utility to run on server; )
 Yes (limitations apply)
Image match
 Yes
 Yes
Image mismatch
 Yes
 Yes

Note that this command inserts specific variables into the execution context. 'Waitfor match/mismatch' in addition performs image comparison which modifies image comparison specific variables.

SYNOPSIS
Waitfor <event_id> [<event specific options>] [timeout=<time>] [ontimeout=<command>] [onpass=<command>] [count=<number>] [wait=<time>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

event_id

- Supported event IDs are 'bell', 'update', 'match' ,'mismatch' and 'clipboard'.

NOTE: There's currently no other way of how to send text from the server to client. It is likely to be provided in one of the future versions.

COMMON OPTIONS

timeout=<time>

- Timeout specifying how long to wait at a maximum. A plain number is by default parsed as miliseconds. See the syntax of time values paragraph for more information on time formats. Note that the Waitfor command typically offers a menu item 'Continue' in the T-Plan Robot editor context menu which enables user to interrupt execution of the Waitfor command and resumes execution of the script. Such a user action is considered as if the required event happened successfuly. This affects execution of the commands defined by parameter onfail (will not be executed) and onpass (will be executed).

ontimeout=<command>

- A command to be executed when the timeout is reached. It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure. See the example section below.

onpass=<command>

- A command to be executed when the the condition is met (i.e. expected update or bell is received). It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure.

count=<number>

- How many events to wait for. Default value is 1. This parameter is ignored if used with 'Waitfor match'.

wait=<time>

- Time to wait after the Waitfor condition is met. It has the same effect as if the following command was 'Wait <time_in_ms>'. This parameter is ignored if the timeout defined by the timeout parameter is reached. A plain number is by default parsed as miliseconds. See the syntax of time values paragraph for more time formats.


Waitfor bell [<common options>]

SPECIFIC OPTIONS - BELL

None.


Waitfor update [area=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]]  [extent=<number>[%]]  [cumulative=<false|true>]  [<common options>]

SPECIFIC OPTIONS - UPDATE

area=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]

- Screen area of interest. This parameter is applicable only to the update event and enables user to define a custom area and watch it for updates. The area coordinates have format of 'x:<x>,y:<y>,w:<width>,h:<height>', where each coordinate can be specified in pixels (e.g. 'x:225') or as a percentage (e.g. 'x:23%'). If any of x, y, width or height is omitted, T-Plan Robot will use the full screen values to determine the missing parameters, i.e. 'x:0, y:0, w:<screen_width>, h:<screen_height>'. You may also define the update area using the status bar Update Coordinates feature.

extent=<number>[%]

- Extent of the screen update. This parameter is applicable only to the update event and defines how large the screen update must be. The value can be either a number of updated pixels (e.g. 'extent=400') or percentage (e.g. 'extent=22%'). If a custom area is defined by the area parameter, the percentage/pixel value will be computed against this area.

cumulative=<false|true>

- Switches on/off cumulative updates. If your desktop server prefers gradual screen updates and sends many small image fragments instead of a larger expected one, switch this feature on and T-Plan Robot will sumarize all partial updates falling into the defined area. The default value is false.


Waitfor match | mismatch [template=<template_image_file_list>] [passrate=<pass_rate>%] [interval=<comparison_interval>] [method=<comparison_method>] [methodparams=<custom_params>] [cmparea=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]] [<common options>]  [<image_search_options>]
* Template file list is obligatory only if it is required by the selected image comparison algorithm. Both two algorithms provided by T-Plan Robot v2.0 do require a template file.

SPECIFIC OPTIONS - MATCH AND MISMATCH

template=<template_image_file_list>

- One or more image file names separated by semicolon (';') to be compared to the remote desktop image. On Linux/Unix make sure the file name doesn't contain semicolon because the list would be incorrectly parsed.File names can be either relative (e.g. img.png) or absolute (e.g. /root/report/img.png). If you use relative path, the image will be searched in the directory defined by the _TEMPLATE_DIR variable. Supported image formats are subject to the Java version. Java 1.6 supports at least PNG, JPG, GIF and BMP.

Template images will be compared with the remote desktop image in the specified list order. If a template comparison produces a positive result (either match or mismatch depending on the specified event), the condition is considered to be met and the command finishes with an exit code of 0. Predefined variable _COMPARETO_TEMPLATE_INDEX may be used to determine index of the matching template in the list. See image comparison specific variables for more.

Image comparison should not be performed against images with lossy compression such as JPEG. Use PNG or BMP instead. They preserve 100% of the image information and guarantee reliable and stable comparison results. Image comparison is discussed in the Compareto command specification.

passrate=<pass_rate>%

- Pass rate for image comparison. This parameter is applicable only to the match and mismatch events. It must be a number followed by the percentage character (e.g. 'passrate=95%'). If this parameter is omitted, default value defined in user preferences is applied. This default value can be configured in the Compareto preferences panel of the Preferences window.

interval=<time>

- This parameter defines time interval for image comparisons. This parameter is applicable only to the match event. If you set it e.g. to 2 seconds, the desktop image will be compared against the given template image every 2 seconds. A plain number is by default parsed as miliseconds. See the syntax of time values paragraph for more time formats. If this parameter is omitted, default value defined in user preferences is applied. This default value can be configured in the Compareto preferences panel of the Preferences window.

method=<comparison_method>

- Algorithm to be used for image comparison. If omitted, T-Plan Robot will use the default algorithm defined by a parameter in the configuration file. T-Plan Robot 2.0 provides two image comparsion algorithms. You may also write your own one using the Plugin API.

methodparams=<custom_params>

- Custom parameters to be passed to the image comparison algorithm. As T-Plan Robot 2.0 default image comparsion algorithms don't support any custom parameters, you don't need to specify this parameter unless you write your own algorithm and plug it in using Plugin API.

cmparea=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]

- Custom comparison area. You can specify here the area of the remote desktop to be compared to a template. If you omit this parameter, the whole remote desktop will be used. The area coordinates have format of 'x:<x>,y:<y>,w:<width>,h:<height>', where each coordinate can be specified in pixels (e.g. 'x:225') or as a percentage (e.g. 'x:23%'). If any of x, y, width or height is omitted, T-Plan Robot will use the full screen values to determine the missing parameters, i.e. 'x:0, y:0, w:<screen_width>, h:<screen_height>'. You may also define the comparison area using the Waitfor window.

removebg=<true|false>

- Apply automatic transparency to ignore the template image background color. This parameter is supported only when the selected comparison method supports transparency parameters, such as the "search" one. If the template image (or template images) already contain transparent or translucent pixels, the background filter is not applied and this parameter as well as the bgcolor one is ignored. Default value is "false" (background filter is off).

bgcolor=<color>

- Optional custom color for the background filter. It only makes sense when the background filter is on (removebg=true). The value must be an RGB color in the HTML-like notation, such as for example "ffffff" for white or "000000" for black. It must be 6 characters long where each of the R, G, B components are specified in form of 2-digit hexa decimal number (00 to ff). When the bgcolor is not specified the method selects the background color from the very first template image pixel (top left image corner). 

minalpha=<0-255>

- Translucency tolerance. It may be applied to images filtered through the removebg filter as well as to templates with already existing translucent pixels when the selected comparison method supports transparency (such as "search"). Alpha is a pixel color component between 0 (transparent) and 255 (opaque) which defines the level of pixel translucency. The default minalpha value of 255 instructs the search algorithm to compare just the fully opaque pixels and ignore all transparent or translucent (semi-transparent) ones. Values lower than 255 will make the algorithm to compare even translucent pixels with the alpha component equal to or greater than the specified limit. Comparison of such pixels is based on color similarity with a fixed threshold.

Waitfor clipboard [<common options>]

SPECIFIC OPTIONS - CLIPBOARD

None.


RETURNS
The command generally returns 0 (zero) when the condition (event) is met. Non-zero value (usually 1) is returned when the timeout is reached. 'Waitfor match' and 'Waitfor mismatch' mimick behavior of the Compareto command and return 0 (zero) when the comparison passes, 1 when it fails and 2 when the template image is not found or cannot be read.

EXAMPLES
Typeline "export MYDOC=`find / -name mydoc.txt`; sleep 1; echo -e '\007\007'"
Waitfor bell count=2
Typeline "gnome-text-editor $MYDOC"

- This is a typical example on how to use the bell event on a Unix/Linux system. Let's suppose that you need to find a file on your hard drive and edit it. The first command will run the search in a terminal window and proceed to the Waitfor command. Once the search finishes, two bell characters are printed using the echo OS command and your machine beeps twice. This will cause the Waitfor command to proceed and run the third command which will open the document in a Gnome text editor.

Please note the 'sleep 1' command in the first line. If your desktop server is very fast and your machine running T-Plan Robot is somewhat slower, it may happen that the document search finishes before T-Plan Robot manages to proceed to the Waitfor command. The 'sleep 1' prevents this problem because the server will wait 1 second before printing the two bell characters.

procedure terminate {
    Screenshot error.jpg
    Report report.html
    Exit {1}
}
Typeline myapplication
Waitfor update extent=40% timeout=20s ontimeout="terminate 2"

- This is a typical usage of the 'Waitfor update' command. It shows a situation when you are starting a GUI application called myapplication from a terminal window. Let's suppose that the application window has a fixed size equal to at least 40% of the screen size. If the GUI starts properly, the script will continue. The Waitfor command will otherwise wait for 20 seconds and then will run the exit procedure with the given exit code.

Waitfor match template=application.png;application2.png passrate=95% interval=5s timeout=5m ontimeout="exit 1"

- Compare the remote desktop image to images application.png and application2.png every 5 seconds until there's at least 95% match with one of them. If this condition is not met within 5 minutes, terminate the script execution using the Exit command and return exit code 1.


Press Ctrl+C
Waitfor clipboard timeout=5s
if ({_EXIT_CODE} == 0) {
  Screenshot copied_text.jpg desc="Received text copied on the remote desktop: {_SERVER_CLIPBOARD_CONTENT}"
}

- Pressing of Ctrl+C on the remote desktop typically copies selected text to the remote system clipboard. Some desktop servers are capable of sending this text to the clients. T-Plan Robot can decode such a message and provide the text into the script in form of the _SERVER_CLIPBOARD_CONTENT variable. The example above shows how to verify reception of the copied text through Waitfor clipboard and how to use it e.g. in description of a screenshot.


3.2.9 Compareto

DESCRIPTION
Compareto - The Compareto command is intended to compare the current remote desktop image to one or more images stored in files using a specified image comparison method. An optional action may be executed when the comparison passes or fails. If you want to display the comparison result in the HTML report generated by the Report command, use Screenshot. If you want to wait until the screen matches your template image, use 'Waitfor match'. Both Screenshot and 'Waitfor match' commands use the methods of the Compareto command internally and support the same parameters.

Version 2.0 contains two simple image comparison algorithms named default and search. You may also take advantage of the Plugin API to write your own image comparison module and plug it into T-Plan Robot. Concepts of image comparison with T-Plan Robot are also discussed in a separate document called How To Use Image Comparison.

To make image comparison more reliable consider the following hints:
1. Comparison Method 'default'
This is the default image comparison method. It is based a very simple color histogram algorithm. Both images are processed pixel by pixel and number of pixels of the same color is counted. The color counters are then compared and a sum of different colors is generated. The sum is then divided by the total pixel count to get the comparison ratio.

Let's suppose you are comparing to an image of 100x100 pixels (total of 10,000 pixels). There are 3,000 pixels of red, 3,000 pixels of green and 4,000 pixels of black color. Your desktop image contains just 5,000 red and 5,000 black pixels. The sum of differences is counted as (5000 red - 3000 red) + (4000 black - 5000 black) + 3000 green, which results in 4000 different pixels. The computed comparison rate is then 60% (6,000/10,000) which actually indicates that the images have 6,000 pixels of the same color.

Though this is a very primitive comparison algorithm, it is sufficient e.g. in cases when you need to verify whether the desktop displays correct application. If you have a solid color desktop background, this algorithm is also quite robust in terms of changes in window positions because it doesn't affect the color histogram.

2. Comparison Method 'search'
This method searches the remote desktop or its part for an image, usually and icon or a fragment of the remote desktop. A plain pixel comparison is used. Coordinates of the found instances are then provided through variables _SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT, _SEARCH_X and _SEARCH_Y. See the table of predefined variables in the Var command chapter.

The method supports tolerant image search mode and is able to search even for image occurencies which have a certain amount of pixels different from the template image. The pass rate is converted to a number of pixels (template_pixel_count * (1 - passrate)) and the remote desktop image is searched for all instances having a number of different pixels lower than or equal to this number. If your template image size is e.g. 100x100 pixels and you specify 99% pass rate, T-Plan Robot will find all areas of remote server desktop having up to 100 different pixels. Note that the lower pass rate you specify, the lower the performance will be and the longer the search will take.

T-Plan Robot Enterprise version 2.1 and higher the method allows to ignore template image background color. It accepts an opaque template image on the input (meaning an image with no transparency or translucency introduced through other third party image editors such as Gimp). It is intended to support search for an object or objects which may appear on various solid color background. This functionality is realized through three new parameters, removebg, bgcolor and minalpha:
The method returns 100% match if at least one instance of the template image is located and 0% if it is not found. Note that the number of occurencies is limited by a parameter in the Compareto command preferences which can be customized in the T-Plan Robot Preferences window.

The search method is a multi purpose image comparison algorithm useful for remote desktop verification as well as for locating objects on the screen. If you want to verify that it displays a correct window, cut a unique piece of the window image, save it to a template file and than use the search comparison method to find it. Another way to use this algorithm is to get coordinates of a button with an icon before clicking it.

SYNOPSIS
compareto <image_list> [passrate=<pass_rate>%] [onpass=<command>] [onfail=<command>] [method=<comparison_method>] [methodparams=<custom_params>] [cmparea=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
image_list

- One or more image file names separated by semicolon (';') to be compared to the remote desktop image. On Linux/Unix make sure the file name doesn't contain semicolon because the list would be incorrectly parsed. File names can be either relative (e.g. img.png) or absolute (e.g. /root/report/img.png). If you use relative path, the image will be searched in the directory defined by the _TEMPLATE_DIR variable. Supported image formats are subject to the Java version. Java 1.6 supports at least PNG, JPG, GIF and BMP.

Template images will be compared with the remote desktop image in the specified list order. If a template comparison produces a positive result (either match or mismatch depending on the specified event), the condition is considered to be met and the command finishes with an exit code of 0 and skips any remaining templates in the list. Predefined variable _COMPARETO_TEMPLATE_INDEX may be then used to determine index of the matching template image. See image comparison specific variables for a complete list of supported variables.

passrate=<pass_rate>%

- Pass rate for image comparison. It must be a number followed by the percentage character (e.g. 'passrate=95%'). If this parameter is omitted, default pass rate defined in the T-Plan Robot preferences will be used (default values are 95% for the 'default' and 100% for the 'search' methods). You may customize these default values in the T-Plan Robot Preferences window.

onpass=<command>

- A command to be executed when T-Plan Robot successfuly connects to a server. It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure or branch the code using the if/else statement.

onfail=<command>

- A command to be executed when T-Plan Robot fails to connect to a server. It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure.

method=<comparison_method>

- Algorithm to be used for image comparison. If omitted, T-Plan Robot will use the default algorithm defined by a parameter in the configuration file. You may customize this parameter in the T-Plan Robot Preferences window. T-Plan Robot 2.0 provides two image comparsion algorithms, 'default' and 'search'. You may also write your own one using the Plugin API.

methodparams=<custom_params>

- Custom parameters to be passed to the image comparison algorithm. As T-Plan Robot 2.0 default image comparsion algorithms don't support any custom parameters, you don't need to specify this parameter unless you write your own algorithm.

cmparea=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]

- Custom comparison area. You can specify here the area of the remote desktop to be compared to a template. If you omit this parameter, the whole remote desktop will be used. The area coordinates have format of 'x:<x>,y:<y>,w:<width>,h:<height>', where each coordinate can be specified in pixels (e.g. 'x:225') or as a percentage (e.g. 'x:23%'). If any of x, y, width or height is omitted, T-Plan Robot will use the full screen values to determine the missing parameters, i.e. 'x:0, y:0, w:<screen_width>, h:<screen_height>'. You may also define the comparison area using the Compareto window.

removebg=<true|false>

- Apply automatic transparency to ignore the template image background color. This parameter is supported only when the selected comparison method supports transparency parameters, such as the "search" one. If the template image (or template images) already contain transparent or translucent pixels, the background filter is not applied and this parameter as well as the bgcolor one is ignored. Default value is "false" (background filter is off).

bgcolor=<color>

- Optional custom color for the background filter. It only makes sense when the background filter is on (removebg=true). The value must be an RGB color in the HTML-like notation, such as for example "ffffff" for white or "000000" for black. It must be 6 characters long where each of the R, G, B components are specified in form of 2-digit hexa decimal number (00 to ff). When the bgcolor is not specified the method selects the background color from the very first template image pixel (top left image corner). 

minalpha=<0-255>

- Translucency tolerance. It may be applied to images filtered through the removebg filter as well as to templates with already existing translucent pixels when the selected comparison method supports transparency (such as "search"). Alpha is a pixel color component between 0 (transparent) and 255 (opaque) which defines the level of pixel translucency. The default minalpha value of 255 instructs the search algorithm to compare just the fully opaque pixels and ignore all transparent or translucent (semi-transparent) ones. Values lower than 255 will make the algorithm to compare even translucent pixels with the alpha component equal to or greater than the specified limit. Comparison of such pixels is based on color similarity with a fixed threshold.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) when the comparison passes, 1 when it fails and 2 when the template image is not found or cannot be read.

EXAMPLES
Compareto netscape.png passrate=95% onfail="exit 1"

- Compare the image of the current remote desktop to image netscape.png. If there is not at least 95% match, terminate the script execution using the Exit command and return exit code 1.


Compareto button1.png;button2.png method=search
if ({_EXIT_CODE} == 0) {
  Mouse click to="x:{_SEARCH_X}+5,y:{_SEARCH_Y}+5"
}

- Search the remote desktop image for a button matching either button1.png or button2.png. If it is found, click on it. The command adds 5 pixels to the x and y coordinates to make sure you click in the middle of the button.

Compareto "search.png" method="search"
for (i=1; {i}<{_SEARCH_MATCH_COUNT}+1; i={i}+1) {
  # Nested variables compose the variable names of a suffix and an index
   Mouse click to=x:{_SEARCH_X_{i}},y:{_SEARCH_Y_{i}}
}

- Search the remote desktop image for an icon represented by the template image search.png and click onto each of the occurencies.

3.2.10 Exec

DESCRIPTION
Exec - Execute an OS command on the local system (meaning on the machine which runs T-Plan Robot). The argument must be a single command, e.g. 'ls -l' on Unix/Linux. Pipes and redirection of the output are not allowed. If you need to save the output to a file, use the outfile parameter.

If you need to execute a Windows command which is provided by the command line interpreter, you need to specify the interpreter in the Exec command. This applies to commands like dir, cd, copy, md, mkdir, rd, rmdir, del, erase etc. A complete list of commands depends on the Windows system and is available at the Microsoft site. Another good source is the COMMAND.COM page at Twikipedia. An example of running 'dir' on Windows would then look like:

Exec "command.com /C dir"

Exec command inserts four values into the variable table. They are _EXEC_COMMAND (last executed OS command), _EXEC_ERROR (error output), _EXEC_OUTPUT (standard output) and _EXEC_VALUE (OS command exit code). See the table of predefined variables in the Var command chapter.

SYNOPSIS
exec <command> [count=<number>][onpass=<command>] [onfail=<command>] [outfile=<file_name>] [wait=<time>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
command

- OS command to be executed on the local system.

count=<number>

- How many times to execute the command. The default value is 1.

onpass=<command>

- A T-Plan Robot command to be executed if the execution succeeds (when exit code 0 is returned). It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure or an if/else construction based on the Exec command return value.

onfail=<command>

- A T-Plan Robot command to be executed if the execution fails (i.e. non-zero exit code is returned). It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure or an if/else construction based on the Exec command return value.

outfile=<file_name>

- File name to save the command output to. If you specify just the file name, it will be created in the current working directory.

wait=<time>

- Time to wait after the command is executed.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) if the command is successfuly executed or the exit code of the OS command otherwise.

EXAMPLES
Exec "ls -l"

- List the contents of the current directory (Unix/Linux). The listing will be available under the _EXEC_OUTPUT variable.

Exec "date"
Screenshot image.png desc="This screenshot was taken on {_EXEC_OUTPUT}."

- Use the date OS command to insert a time stamp into a screenshot description (Unix/Linux).

Exec "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe http://www.google.com"
Exec "rundll32 url.dll,FileProtocolHandler http://www.google.com"

- Both commands should start Internet Explorer on Windows and open the Google site.

Report index.html
Exec "mozilla file://{_REPORT_FILE}"

- Create an HTML report and open it in a Mozilla browser on the local machine. The _REPORT_FILE variable is populated by the Report command and contains full report file path.

3.2.11 Break

DESCRIPTION
Break - immediately terminate the innermost for loop and proceed to the first command after the loop's enclosing right curly brace '}'. If the command is used outside of a for loop, it is reported as syntax error.

SYNOPSIS
break

RETURNS
The command doesn't modify the exit code and leaves its value on the one returned by the previously executed command.

EXAMPLES

# Infinite loop
 for (; 0 == 0; ) {

     # Wait for at least 20% update of the remote screen.
     # If it doesn't update for 10 seconds, break the loop.
     Waitfor update extent=20% timeout="10s" ontimeout="break"
}

- Use a combination of for, Waitfor and break to hold on execution until the remote desktop stops to update.

3.3 Reporting Commands


3.3.1 Screenshot

DESCRIPTION
Screenshot - Take a screenshot of the current remote desktop and save it to a file.

The Screenshot command has been closely integrated with the Compareto command. Comparison is performed when a corresponding template image is found in the template directory (see the _TEMPLATE_DIR variable) and at least one of the following conditions is met:
Unless you specify a template image explicitly through the 'template' parameter, the command will search the template directory for a template with matching name and extension PNG, GIF, BMP and JPG (in this order). You can switch this feature off in the Screenshot preferences to force the command to search for templates with exactly the same file name as the screenshot images.

Please note that any image comparison performed by this command modifies some image comparison specific variables in the execution context.

SYNOPSIS
screenshot <file> [desc=<description>] [area=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]][attach=<list_of_files>] [template=<image_list>] [passrate=<pass_rate>%] [onpass=<command>] [onfail=<command>] [method=<comparison_method>] [methodparams=<custom_params>] [cmparea=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]]  [drawresults=<true|false>]  [<image_search_options>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
file

- File name to save the image to. It MUST have a supported extension, for example "png" or "jpg". Supported image formats are subject to the Java version. Java 1.6 supports at least PNG, JPG, GIF and BMP. T-Plan Robot will check during every script validation if the path/file can be created and report an error if not. File name can be either relative (e.g. img.jpg) or absolute (e.g. /root/report/img.jpg). If the path doesn't exist, it is created. If you use relative path or just a file name, the image will be saved to a directory defined by the _REPORT_DIR variable.

desc=<description>

- Image description. It will be displayed in the report. As it will be used in an HTML report, it may contain any HTML tags.

area=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]

- This parameter can be used to specify which part (subimage) of the remote desktop will be saved. If you omit this parameter, the whole remote desktop will be used. The area coordinates have format of 'x:<x>,y:<y>,w:<width>,h:<height>', where each coordinate can be specified in pixels (e.g. 'x:225') or as a percentage (e.g. 'x:23%'). If any of x, y, width or height is omitted, T-Plan Robot will use the full screen values to determine the missing parameters, i.e. 'x:0, y:0, w:<screen_width>, h:<screen_height>'. You may also define the comparison area using the Screenshot window.

attach=<list_of_files>

- A file or a list of semicolon (';') separated files to be attached to a report. It provides a way to link e.g. log files and documents to a screenshot in the report. The report generator will list the attachments in the screenshot title in the HTML report and creates a hyperlink for each attached file. Please note that you have to copy the files to the target location on your own as T-Plan Robot neither copies the attached files to the report directory nor validates whether they exist there.

template=<image_list>

- One or more image file names separated by semicolon (';') to be compared to the remote desktop image. On Linux/Unix make sure the file name doesn't contain semicolon because the list would be incorrectly parsed. This parameter originates from the Compareto command. File names can be either relative (e.g. img.png) or absolute (e.g. /root/report/img.png). If you use relative path, the image will be searched in the directory defined by the _TEMPLATE_DIR variable. Supported image formats are subject to the Java version. Java 1.6 supports at least PNG, JPG, GIF and BMP.

Template images will be compared with the remote desktop image in the specified list order. If a template comparison produces a positive result (either match or mismatch depending on the specified event), the condition is considered to be met and the command finishes with an exit code of 0 and skips any remaining templates in the list. Predefined variable _COMPARETO_TEMPLATE_INDEX may be then used to determine index of the matching template image. See image comparison specific variables for a complete list of supported variables.

passrate=<pass_rate>%

- Pass rate for image comparison. It must be a number followed by the percentage character (e.g. 'passrate=95%'). This parameter originates from the Compareto command. If you omit this value, the default pass rate of the Compareto command will be used.

onpass=<command>

- A command to be executed when T-Plan Robot Enterprise successfuly connects to a server. It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure. This parameter originates from the Compareto command.

onfail=<command>

- A command to be executed when T-Plan Robot Enterprise fails to connect to a server. It must be one single command. If you need to define a sequence of command to be executed, use a procedure. This parameter originates from the Compareto command.

method=<comparison_method>

- Algorithm to be used for image comparison. If omitted, T-Plan Robot Enterprise will use the default algorithm defined by a parameter in the configuration file. T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1 provides two image comparsion algorithms, 'default' and 'search'.

methodparams=<custom_params>

- Custom parameters to be passed to the image comparison algorithm. As T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1 default image comparsion methods don't support any custom parameters, you don't need to specify this parameter unless you write your own algorithm.

cmparea=[x:<x>][,y:<y>][,w:<width>][,h:<height>]

- Custom comparison area. You can specify here the area of the remote desktop to be compared to a template. If you omit this parameter, the whole remote desktop will be used. The area coordinates have format of 'x:<x>,y:<y>,w:<width>,h:<height>', where each coordinate can be specified in pixels (e.g. 'x:225') or as a percentage (e.g. 'x:23%'). If any of x, y, width or height is omitted, T-Plan Robot Enterprise will use the full screen values to determine the missing parameters, i.e. 'x:0, y:0, w:<screen_width>, h:<screen_height>'. You may also define the comparison area using the Screenshot window.

removebg=<true|false>

- Apply automatic transparency to ignore the template image background color during image comparison. This parameter is supported only when the selected comparison method supports transparency parameters, such as the "search" one. If the template image (or template images) already contain transparent or translucent pixels, the background filter is not applied and this parameter as well as the bgcolor one is ignored. Default value is "false" (background filter is off).

bgcolor=<color>

- Optional custom color for the background filter. It only makes sense when the background filter is on (removebg=true). The value must be an RGB color in the HTML-like notation, such as for example "ffffff" for white or "000000" for black. It must be 6 characters long where each of the R, G, B components are specified in form of 2-digit hexa decimal number (00 to ff). When the bgcolor is not specified the method selects the background color from the very first template image pixel (top left image corner). 

minalpha=<0-255>

- Translucency tolerance. It may be applied to images filtered through the removebg filter as well as to templates with already existing translucent pixels when the selected comparison method supports transparency (such as "search"). Alpha is a pixel color component between 0 (transparent) and 255 (opaque) which defines the level of pixel translucency. The default minalpha value of 255 instructs the search algorithm to compare just the fully opaque pixels and ignore all transparent or translucent (semi-transparent) ones. Values lower than 255 will make the algorithm to compare even translucent pixels with the alpha component equal to or greater than the specified limit. Comparison of such pixels is based on color similarity with a fixed threshold.

drawresults=<true|false>

- This flag controls whether results of image comparison should be painted into the captured screen shot. The default value is false (meaning "do not paint any results"). If the command doesn't employ image comparison or the specified comparison method doesn't support result painting the parameter is ignored.

In the default T-Plan Robot Enterprise configuration, the "default" image comparison method doesn't support result painting because it doesn't make sense with regard to the algorithm nature. The"search" method does support result painting and draws rectangles corresponding to the match locations in the color specified in command configuration.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) if the screenshot is successfully saved and eventual image comparison passes. If image comparison takes place and fails, a value of 1 is returned. If the screenshot cannot be saved (e.g. not enough space), the command returns 2.

EXAMPLES
Screenshot image.jpg

- Take a screenshot of the current remote desktop and save it as a JPEG image into a file called image.jpg in a directory defined by value of the _REPORT_DIR variable.


Screenshot /root/images/image2.png desc="This image shows what happened after I had clicked the Start button."

- Take a screenshot of the current remote desktop and save it as a PNG image into a file called image.png to the /root/images/ directory. If the executed script generates a report, the provided description will be displayed there.


3.3.2 Report

DESCRIPTION
Report - Create and start a report provider for the executed script. It is an object which builds a report from the script execution data such as results, screenshots and warnings. Report providers are customizable plugins and their functionality, life cycle and output format are implementation specific. See the Plugin API for more information on how to customize reports. Default provider started by the command is configurable in the Report preferences and defaults to 'default' in the open source version and to 'enterprise' in the Enterprise one. You should always reset this setting if you migrate among these two product versions.

Default Report Provider
The default provider is a legacy report generator creating simple HTML reports. It is compatible with the previous VNCRobot 1.x versions and well as T-Plan Robot open source version. Its provider code is "default". It has the following lifecycle:
A sample report is at http://www.t-plan.com/robot/docs/examples/report-simple/sample.html.

The default report provider always processes all images and warnings taken during a script execution. It means that even if you call the Report command at the very end of your script, the HTML report will list all screenshots and warnings including those that were taken before the Report command was executed. The list of images can be currently restricted only depending on the image origin (see the scope parameter below).

HTML reports may also contain a table of results of performed image comparisons. This feature can be configured in the T-Plan Robot Enterprise Preferences window to display all or just failed comparison results executed through the Screenshot commands. Note that image comparisons performed through the Compareto and Waitfor match/mismatch commands are never listed. The rationale is that you have to create a screenshot anyway to provide a functional link in the table. See the sample report at the link listed above for an example.

The default provider also inserts specific values at the end of HTML reports. They are embedded in HTML comments and they are not displayed in browser. They provide information about the report state, length of execution, number of failed image comparisons etc. These values can be parsed by third party applications in order to interpret the report state and result. A list of provided variables with sample values follows:

<!-- version=1.3-20061210 -->
 Indicates which T-Plan Robot Enterprise version and build was used to generate this report.
 
<!-- running=false -->
 Indicates whether execution of the script is running or has already finished. 
<!-- stopped=false -->
 A value of 'true' indicates that execution of the script has been manually stopped by user via Stop button in GUI mode or by Ctrl+C in CLI. 
<!-- paused=false -->
 A value of 'true' indicates that execution of the script has been either manually or programatically (via the Pause command) paused. 
<!-- exitCode=0 -->
 Exit code. Zero indicates success while any other positive number is interpreted as failure. See the Exit command. 
<!-- imageCount=3 -->
 Number of images in the report. 
<!-- failedComparisons=0 -->
 Number of failed image comparisons. 
<!-- warningCount=0 -->
 Number of warnings added by the Warning command.
 
<!-- executionTimeInSec=44 -->
 Time of script execution in seconds.


Enterprise Report Provider
This provider supports both HTML and XML formats. It's code is "enterprise". It copies exactly behavior of the default provider and it even reuses all of its configuration parameters. The difference is however in the way how the test output is processed to generate the resulting report file. Unlike the default provider, this one also supports the Script and Step test results and allows to structure the resulting test report.

When the output format is set to XML (an .xml file is specified in the command argument), the provider generates a simple XML file with all test outputs. It's format is specified in the provider's Java API documentation. As XML reports are linked with an XML style sheet (XSL), they may be displayed by web browsers and they provide exactly the same view of the report as the HTML files generated by the default provider. As interpretation of the XML data into an HTML view is on the web browser side, the XML output is fast and efficient. The XML file may be in addition reused for export of test results to third party applications.

The tool provides a mechanism in the user preferences to replace the default XSL file with a custom one. This allows to customize the way how web browser displays the XML data. The provider offers additional configurable options affecting mainly performance and allow to customize the frequency of report generating.

If the output is set to HTML, the provider in fact generates the XML output first and then employs the XSL transformation to produce an HTML file. This operation is inefficient and usually very slow. As the provider in this case creates the same HTML content as the default one, it is recommended to use the default one instead unless there are custom changes applied to the XSL file.

A sample XML report is available online at http://www.t-plan.com/robot/docs/examples/report-enterprise/sample.xml.


SYNOPSIS
report <file> [provider=<provider_name>] [desc=<description>] [scope=<scope_id>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
file

- File name to save the report to. T-Plan Robot Enterprise will then check whether the path and file can be created and report an error if not. File extension is validated against the list of supported formats declared by the provider and a syntax error is raised on mismatch. The "default" provider supports .htm and .html extensions, the "enterprise" one supports .xml, .htm and .html.

File name can be either relative (e.g. report.xml) or absolute (e.g. /root/report/report.xml). If the path doesn't exist, it is usually created (default provider) but this behavior may be provider specific. If you use a relative path, the report file and all associated outputs should be saved to a directory defined by the _REPORT_DIR variable.

provider=<provider_name>

- Report provider name (code). In the current version it may be 'default', 'enterprise' or eventually name of a custom report provider installed through the plugin framework. This parameter is optional and defaults to the configured default provider in the user preferences if omitted. If you migrate among different product versions (especially between the open source and Enterprise ones), you should always check this value in preferences because it may be set to a provider which is supported by one product version and not by the other one.

If the provider is not specified and the preferred default one doesn't support the requested format, the command searches the list of report provider plug ins and tries to find one supporting it. This provides a failover mechanism for those who switch among product versions and/or provider plug ins.This behavior was implemented in 2.0.1.

desc=<description>

- Report description. It will be displayed in the report header. If the default provider is used, the text may contain any HTML tags.

scope=<scope_id>

- The scope parameter provides a way to define which images should be included in the report based on the screenshot creator. There are two acceptable values:

RETURNS
The Report command returns 0 (zero) if the report provider is started and the first report is created and saved successfuly. If any error occurs, i.e. the report file cannot be created, the command returns 1.

EXAMPLES
Report index.html desc="This is my report."

- Create a report generator and start to generate a report. As relative file is provided, the report will be saved to a directory defined by value of the _REPORT_DIR variable. The provided description will be displayed in the report header.


Report index.xml provider=enterprise desc="This is my XML report."

- Create a report generator and start to generate an XML report. As relative file is provided, the report will be saved to a directory defined by value of the _REPORT_DIR variable. The provided description will be displayed in the report header.


Var _REPORT_DIR=/var/apache/htdocs/robot
Report index.html scope=file
Screenshot start_state.jpg desc="Initial state of the {_MACHINE} desktop. Starting execution of the {_FILE} script..."
...

- This is a typical example on how to use the report command. The first command defines the output path for the report file and screenshots which actually resides inside the Apache document root. This is very convenient because users can watch the report online through a web browser. As both report and screenshot commands use relative path for the outputs, everything will be saved to the output directory.



3.3.3 Warning

DESCRIPTION
Warning - Insert a warning into the report. A warning can be associated with a specific screenshot through the image parameter. Such a warning will be displayed below the image description in the report. If there's no associated image, the warning will be displayed in the report as a single component.

When a script is being executed and there's a running report provider (i.e. the script contains a Report command), an execution of a Warning command will trigger refresh of the report. If there's no active report provider, a warning is created in the internal tables but it is not reported in any way.

SYNOPSIS
warning <description> [image=<screenshot_name>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
description

- Text of the warning to be displayed in the report.

image=<screenshot_name>

- A screenshot to be associated with the warning. The screenshot name should correspond to an image created by the Screenshot command.

RETURNS
The Warning command always returns 0 (zero).

EXAMPLES
Report index.html
Exec "mozilla file://{_REPORT_FILE}"
if ({_EXIT_CODE} > 0) {
  Warning "Mozilla failed to start. Error output: {_EXEC_ERROR}"
}

- Try to open the HTML report in a Mozilla browser using the Exec command and add a warning if it fails.

Screenshot image.jpg template=template1.png onfail="Warning \"The image image.jpg doesn't seem to display what is expected.\" image=image.jpg"

- Take a screenshot and compare it to a template called template1.png. If the comparison fails, add a warning to the image description.



3.3.4 Sendmail

DESCRIPTION
Sendmail - Send an E-mail. The command acts as an SMTP client and sends E-mails with eventual attachments through an SMTP server. Supported authentication schemes are either no security (public mail servers) or plain user/password authentication. The communication is unencrypted (no SSL support at the moment). Attachments are sent using Base64 encoding.

If default values of 'from','to', 'server' and 'user' are provided in the Sendmail preferences, they may be omitted in the command.

SYNOPSIS
sendmail [from=<sender_address>] [to=<recipient_address>] [server=<server[:port]>] [subject=<subject>] [text=<mail_body>] [attach=<attachments>] [user=<userId>] [passwd=<password>]  [debug=<true|false>]
* Parameters are obligatory unless valid default values are provided through Sendmail preferences 

OPTIONS
from=<sender_address>

- Sender address.

to=<recipient_address>

- Recipient address.

server=<server[:port]>

- SMTP server. If just a host name without a port number is used, the command attempts to connect the server on standard SMTP port 25.

subject=<subject>

- Mail subject text.

text=<mail_body>

- Mail body text. If the text starts with "<html>", the content type is set to HTML. Otherwise the content is sent as plain text. To indicate a line break use '\n'. If you need to use '\n' in the normal text, double the backslash character ('\\n').

attach=<attachments>

- List of attachments, i.e. files to attach to the E-mail. File names must be separated by semicolon (';'). On Linux/Unix make sure the file name doesn't contain semicolon because the list would be incorrectly parsed. If an attachment is not found, it is ignored and the mail is sent without it. It is recommended to provide the files with absolute path.

user=<username>

- User ID to be used to authenticate to the SMTP server. This option should be used together with the 'passwd' parameter.

passwd=<password>

- Password to be used to authenticate to the SMTP server. This option should be used together with the 'user' parameter.

debug=<true|false>

- Debug flag. Use debug=true to switch on the JavaMail debugging console output. This is useful if you need to find out why the E-mail feature doesn't work.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (zero) on success or 1 if the E-mail cannot be sent.

EXAMPLES
Screenshot scr.png
Sendmail to="tester@dummyserver.com" from="robot@dummyserver.com" server="mail.dummyserver.com" subject="Screenshot of the remote desktop" text="Please check the attached screenshot." attach="{_REPORT_DIR}/scr.png"

- Take a screenshot of the current remote desktop and send it by E-mail to user tester@dummyserver.com.


 Sendmail subject="Hello" text="This is a multiline E-mail.\nSecond line.\nThird line."

- Example of a multiline E-mail. This command will only work if you have set correct default values of the 'from','to' and 'server' parameters in the Sendmail command preferences.


3.3.5 Script

DESCRIPTION
Script - Define start or end of a script (test case). Though the command was introduced as part of integration with T-Plan Professional, it can be used in a generic way to define the test script structure as is common in the QA industry. Script mappings are recognized by the Enterprise report provider and may be used to map the output XML data (or HTML report) onto QA documentation (such as test case specification).

A script in T-Plan terminology in this case is equal to a test case. Scripts in general consist of test steps which represent a set atomic test instructions describing how to execute the test case. Steps may be specified in T-Plan Robot Enterprise scripts through the Step command.

The command is intended to be used in pairs [Script <id> start , Script <id> end] to define a block of code which executes a test case. Any output objects generated inside such a block (such as screenshots or warnings) are then associated with the script (test case) ID and this relationship is reflected in the test result data. As a script block validity ends automatically with the file end or with declaration of another "Script start" command, declaration of the script end is optional and may be omitted.


SYNOPSIS
script <id> [start|end]  [name=<displayable_name>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
id

- A unique script ID. It may be a number or text. If the test results are to be exported to a third party test management application, the ID must be an understandable value. Export to T-Plan database (and T-Plan Professional) requires the ID to be a valid script entity number as is described in the Entity Mapping chapter of the T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.1 Integration Reference.

start|end

- Indicates whether the script block starts or ends. It may be also specified as action=[start|end]. If the parameter is omitted, the command defaults to start.

name

- Optional displayable name for the script.

RETURNS
The Script command always returns 0 (zero).

EXAMPLES
Script 1 start name="Display http://www.t-plan.com"
Press Windows+R wait=3s
Typeline "http://www.t-plan.com"
Waitfor match template="tplanlogo.png" method=search timeout=20s
if ({_EXIT_CODE} == 0) {
  Step "Open http://www.t-plan.com in web browser" pass
} else {
  Step "Open http://www.t-plan.com in web browser" fail
  Exit 1
}
Script 1 end

- An example of script number 1 which opens the T-Plan web site in the default web browser on Windows. The script uses image search to verify that the page was displayed successfully. If the T-Plan logo is detected  on the desktop, the script records a passed step result. Otherwise a failed step is recorded and the script exits with code of 1 to indicate failure.

3.3.6 Step

DESCRIPTION
Step - Define result of a test step. A step represents one atomic instruction of a test case (script). Steps should be located inside a script block.

SYNOPSIS
step <name> [pass|fail|nt|na]  [instruct=<instructions>]  [expected=<expected_result_desc>]  [actual=<actual_result_desc>]  [notes=<notes>] 
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
name

- Displayable step name, for example "Logon", "Open Browser" etc. It doesn't have to be unique.

pass|fail|nt|na

- Step result. It must be one of pass (passed, successful), fail (failed, unsuccessful), nt (not yet tested) or na (not available).

instruct=<instructions>

- Step instructions (optional). It is usually a brief description of what was performed to accomplish the step.

expected=<expected_result_desc>

- Description of expected step result (optional).

actual=<actual_result_desc>

- Description of actual step result (optional). It is typically used with failed steps to indicate the difference from the expected result.

notes=<notes>

- Additional step information (optional).

RETURNS
The Step command always returns 0 (zero).

EXAMPLES
Compareto template= "application.png"
if ({_EXIT_CODE} == 0) {
  Step "Start application" pass expected="The application GUI opens."
} else {
  Step "Start application" fail expected="The application GUI opens." actual="The application failed to start."
  Exit 1
}

- A typical example of Step usage. The snippet employs image comparison to test whether the desktop matches the application.png template or not and produces a Step pass or fail result accordingly.


3.4 I/O Commands


3.4.1 File

DESCRIPTION
File - Read from and/or write to text files. The command allows to open or create plain text files, read, write and search for text values and parse values from individual text lines using either the Comma Separated Values (CSV) format or Java regular expressions.

Files are by default opened and saved in UTF-8 encoding. The file content is read using the Java character streams line by line and stored into a string buffer in the memory. All subsequent I/O operations are performed on the buffer and the content is written to the file (or output file) only when the file either gets explicitly closed or when the script finishes in a standard way (meaning not through unexpected or abnormal program termination). With regard to the used technology the command is suitable to process smaller files (up to tens of kB) and its performance significantly degrades with large data files.

The command defines this set of actions:
A typical work flow consists of the following logical steps:
  1. Open an existing file ("File open") or create a new one ("File create"). This step populates variables with the file name, path and structure. If the script works with multiple files at a time, each file must be tagged by an ID and all subsequent File commands must reference it.
  2. To read a value from a known position in the file use "File read". If the position is unknown, "File find" may be used to identify position of a text value. If the file contains data in a particular format, parse them through "File parse". This command supports reading of values in the CSV format or parsing of values based on a custom regular expression.
  3. To write to the file use either "File append" or "File insert". The append action adds the text to the end of the file. The insert one allows to insert the text into a particular position in the file.
  4. To close a document and save or discard changes call the "File close" command. This step is optional and all documents are closed and eventually saved automatically when the script finishes.
Navigation through the file and retrieval of parsed text is enabled through variables:

Who Creates, Group Name
 Variable Name Description
File open,
File create

(so called "File Group")
 		_FILE_FILE
 File path (full/absolute).
_FILE_FILENAME
 File name.
_FILE_OUTFILE Output file path (full/absolute) if it was explicitly specified.
_FILE_OUTFILENAME Output file name if it was explicitly specified.
File open
File create
File append
File insert

("Counter Group")
 _FILE_LENGTH File length in characters including the new line ones. Note that it doesn't have to match
the file size because some UTF-8 characters may be encoded in multiple bytes.
_FILE_LINE_COUNT Number of text lines in the file.
File find
File read
File parse
File insert

("Line Group")
 _FILE_LINE_NUMBER
 Number of the currently processed line. Lines are numbered from 1 (one).
_FILE_LINE_LENGTH Length of the current line in characters excluding the new line character.
_FILE_LINE_TEXT Text of the current line (full length without the new line character).
_FILE_LINE_COLUMN Column (character) number on the line. Column numbering starts from 1 (one) which
represents beginning of the line. This variable is populated by the "find" action to indicate
position of the searched text on the line. Other commands either mimick the "column"
parameter or its default value of 1 (one).
File read
 _FILE_READ
 Text read by the "File read"command.
File delete
 _FILE_DELETED
 Text deleted by the "File delete" command.
File parse

("Parse group")
 		_FILE_PARSE_COUNT
 Number of values parsed by "File parse".
_FILE_PARSE_VALUE<N>
 N-th value parsed from the text line where <N> is between 1 and _FILE_PARSE_COUNT.

The command in general returns 0 on success or one of the folowing exit codes:

Exit Code Pseudo code
 Description
0
 SUCCESS
 Successful completion.
1
 FAILED_TO_OPEN
 Failed to open the input file. Returned just by "File open".
2
 FAILED_TO_SAVE
 Failed to save to the file. Returned just by "File close".
3 FAILED_TO_FIND
 Failed to find a value. Returned just by "File find" to indicate failed text search.
4
 INVALID_POSITION
 The line and/or column parameters do not point to an existing position in the file. Returned by all commands supporting "line" and "column".
 
Syntax and parameters of each action are described in details below.
  
SYNOPSIS


File open [file=<file>]  [outfile=<output_file>]  [id=<identifier>]
File create [file=<file>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
file=<ile>

- File path (absolute or relative). Relative path is resolved against the calling script location (meaning the folder containing the calling script).

outfile=<output_file>

- Optional output file (absolute or relative). Relative path is resolved against the calling script location (meaning the folder containing the calling script). If the parameter is omitted the file is opened in read/write mode. If the file already exists it will be overwritten.

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS) or 1 (FAILED_TO_OPEN). The create command always returns 0 because it creates the file just in memory.  If the command exits with 0 it populates variables from the File and Counter variable groups.

EXAMPLES

File open file="data.csv"

- Open a CSV file located in the same directory as the script in read/write mode.

File open file="C:\Data\data.csv" outfile="newdata.csv"

- Open a CSV file located in the specified directory in the read only mode. When the file is closed, save the content and eventually all changes into the specified output file in the script directory. If the output file exists it will be overwritten.

File create file="C:\Data\log.txt"

- Create a new file content buffer in the memory and associate it with the specified file for output.



File append  [text=<text>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
text=<text>

- Text to append to the end of the file. It may contain any UTF-8 characters. To indicate a line break use "\n". If you need to use the "\n" sequence in the normal text, double the backslash character ("\\n").

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

RETURNS
The command always returns 0 (success). As it changes file size and eventually number of lines, the command updates variables from the Counter group.

EXAMPLES

File append text="This is one line\nwhile this is another one"

- Append two lines of text , "This is one line" and "while this is another one" to the end of the file.

File append text="screws\\nails"

- Append one line of text, "screws\nails". The back slash character must be in this case doubled because it would be otherwise interpreted as new line character.



File insert  [text=<text>]  [line=<line_number>]  [column=<column_number>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
text=<text>

- Text to insert into the file. It may contain any UTF-8 characters. To indicate a line break use "\n". If you need to use the "\n" sequence in the normal text, double the backslash character ("\\n").

line=<line_number>

- Ordinary line number to insert the text to. Numbering starts from 1. If the line number is out of the range the command fails with exit code of 4 (INVALID_POSITION) .

column=<column_number>

- Ordinary column (character) number to insert the text to on the specified line. Numbering starts from 1. If not specified the command inserts by default to the line beginning (column=1).  If the column is greater than number of characters on the line the command fails with exit code of 4 (INVALID_POSITION).

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (SUCCESS) or 4 (INVALID_POSITION) if the line and column parameters do not point to an existing position in the file. As it changes file size and eventually number of lines, the command updates variables from the Counter group. The command also updates the Line variable group to provide information about the line pointed to by the [line,column] coordinates.

EXAMPLES

File read line=2
File insert text=" and potatoes" line=2 column={_FILE_LINE_LENGTH}+1

- Append " and potatoes" to the end of the second line. The "File read" command is called to get the line length (the _FILE_LINE_LENGTH variable).

File find text="bananas"
File insert text=" and potatoes" line={_FILE_LINE_NUMBER} column={_FILE_LINE_COLUMN}+7

- Search for "bananas" and insert  the text to create "bananas and potatoes". Note that the example doesn't test whether the find command succeeds.


File find  [text=<text>]  [line=<line_number>]  [column=<column_number>]  [direction=<forward|backward>]  [scope=<line|file>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
text=<text>

- Text to search for. It may contain any UTF-8 characters. To indicate a line break use "\n". If you need to use the "\n" sequence as normal text, double the backslash character ("\\n").

line=<line_number>

- Line number to start the search from. Numbering starts from 1. If the line number is out of the range the command fails with exit code of 4 (INVALID_POSITION).

column=<column_number>

- Column (character) number to start the search from (to be used together with "line"). Numbering starts from 1. If not specified the command searches by default from the line beginning (column=1).  If the column is greater than number of characters on the line the command fails with exit code of 4 (INVALID_POSITION).

direction=<forward|backward>

- Search mode. The default one is forward and searches from the position specified by [line, column] towards the end of file or line. The backward mode searches in the opposite direction from the given position.

scope=<file|line>

- Search scope. The default one is file and searches the whole file or its part. The line scope allows to search just the specified line or its part and the searched text should not contain the new line character.

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (SUCCESS) if the text is found, 3 (NOT_FOUND) if the text is not found or 4 (INVALID_POSITION) if the line and column parameters do not point to a valid position in the file. If the search succeeds, the Line variable group is updated to provide the target [line,column] coordinates.

EXAMPLES
File find text="bananas"
if ({_EXIT_CODE} == 3) {
  Exit 3
}
File insert text=" and potatoes" line={_FILE_LINE_NUMBER} column={_FILE_LINE_COLUMN}+7

- Search the file forwards for "bananas" and insert  the text to create "bananas and potatoes". If the word is not found the script will be terminated with the exit code of 3.


File read  [line=<line_number>]  [column=<column_number>]  [length=<length_in_chars>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
line=<line_number>

- Number of line to read from. Numbering starts from 1. If the line number is out of the range the command fails with exit code of 4 (INVALID_POSITION) .

column=<column_number>

- Column (character) number to read from. Numbering starts from 1. If not specified the command reads by default from the line beginning (column=1).  If the column is greater than number of characters on the line the command fails with exit code of 4 (INVALID_POSITION).

length=<length_in_chars>

- Optional length specifying how many characters should be read. The range may not exceed the text line bounds. If the length parameter is not specified the command reads to the end of the specified line (excluding the new line character).

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (SUCCESS) if the text is located and read successfully or 4 (INVALID_POSITION) if the line and column parameters do not point to a valid position in the file. If successful the extracted text is stored into the _FILE_READ variable. The command also updates the Line variable group to provide information about the line pointed to by the [line,column] coordinates.

EXAMPLES
File find text="bananas" line=2 scope=line
File read line=2 length={_FILE_LINE_COLUMN}
Type "{_FILE_READ}"

- Find the "bananas" word on the second line, read the text before the word and type it.


File parse  [line=<line_number>]  [delimeter=<delimeter_char>]  [separator=<separator_char>]  [trim=<true|false>]  [id=<identifier>]
File parse  [line=<line_number>]  [pattern=<regular_expression>]  [trim=<true|false>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

The command by default reads values from the specified line according to the Comma Separated Values (CSV) specification. The command is compatible with rules specified in the Comma-Separated Values article at Wikipedia and supports multi line values. The parsing mechanism may be in addition customized with optional custom text delimeter, value separator. and trimming mode.

When the "pattern" parameter is specified, the command parses the line based on the provided Java-compatible regular expression. This approach takes advantage of the java.lang.String.split() method and it is fundamentally different from the CSV mechanism. For example, to parse individual words separated by a space use regular expression "\s". This mode may not be mixed with CVS parsing and "pattern" can not be specified at the same time as "delimeter" and/or "separator".

The parsed values are made available through a set of numbered variables (_FILE_PARSE_VALUE1, _FILE_PARSE_VALUE2, ...) and a counter (_FILE_PARSE_COUNT) and may be retrieved in the script through a "for" loop with nested variable names (see the examples section). The command also modifies the line variables and sets the line number to the last processed line. This is an important feature allowing to iterate correctly over lines which may contain multiline values. 

OPTIONS
line=<line_number>

- Number of line to parse. Numbering starts from 1. If the line number is out of the range the command fails with exit code of 4 (INVALID_POSITION) .

delimeter=<delimeter_char>

- Character which will serve as text delimeter. If the parameter is not specified it defaults to CSV compatible double quote ( " ).

separator=<separator_char>

- Character which will serve as value separator. If the parameter is not specified it defaults to CSV compatible comma ( , ).

pattern=<regular_expression>

- Regular expression expressing the value to separate values by. The expression must comply with the Java Pattern specification.

trim=<true|false>

- The value of true trims white spaces from the beginning and end of each parsed value. Be aware that this mode is not CSV compatible and doesn't meet requirements of RFC 4180. The default value is false (do not trim). 

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (SUCCESS) if the text is located and read successfully or 4 (INVALID_POSITION) if the line and column parameters do not point to a valid position in the file. On success the command populates the Parse variable group and also updates the Line one with information about the processed line.

EXAMPLES

Let's have a set of data listed as example on Wikipedia:

1997 Ford
 E350
 ac, abs, moon 3000.00
1999
 Chevy
 Venture "Extended Edition"
4900.00
1999
 Chevy Venture "Extended Edition, Very Large"
5000.00
1996
 Jeep
 Grand Cherokee MUST SELL!
air, moon roof, loaded		 4799.00

The corresponding CSV file looks as follows:

1997,Ford,E350,"ac, abs, moon",3000.00
1999,Chevy,"Venture ""Extended Edition""","",4900.00
1999,Chevy,"Venture ""Extended Edition, Very Large""","",5000.00
1996,Jeep,Grand Cherokee,"MUST SELL!
air, moon roof, loaded",4799.00

The following script parses the lines one by one and prints out the individual CSV values (to see the results open a text editor on the connected remote desktop). It also calculates and prints out a sum of all prices located usually in the fifth value on the line. Note that we can not simply iterate over the number of lines in the file because the second last line contains a multiline value.

File open file="data.csv"

# We declare the fifth variable just to supress compiler error in the Eval cmd below
Var sum=0 _FILE_PARSE_VALUE5=0

for (i=1; {i}<{_FILE_LINE_COUNT}; i={i}+1) {
  File parse line={i}
  Typeline "Line #{i}:"
  for (j=1; {j}<{_FILE_PARSE_COUNT}+1; j={j}+1) {
    Typeline " Value #{j}: {_FILE_PARSE_VALUE{j}}"
  }

  # Add the car price from column 5 to the sum
  Eval sum={sum}+{_FILE_PARSE_VALUE5}

  # As the parse command updates the Line var group with number of the last
  # processed line, this will alow us to skip lines with multiline values
  Var i={_FILE_LINE_NUMBER}
}
Typeline "Summary value: ${sum}"

When the script is executed it types the following output on the desktop:
 
Line #1:
  Value #1: 1997
  Value #2: Ford
  Value #3: E350
  Value #4: ac, abs, moon
  Value #5: 3000.00
Line #2:
  Value #1: 1999
  Value #2: Chevy
  Value #3: Venture "Extended Edition"
  Value #4:
  Value #5: 4900.00
Line #3:
  Value #1: 1999
  Value #2: Chevy
  Value #3: Venture "Extended Edition, Very Large"
  Value #4:
  Value #5: 5000.00
Line #4:
  Value #1: 1996
  Value #2: Jeep
  Value #3: Grand Cherokee
  Value #4: MUST SELL!
air, moon roof, loaded
  Value #5: 4799.00
Summary value: $17699

Another example: Let's have a text file with numbers separated by one or more spaces or tabulators:

1  14   23  9   100
117   5  7

To calculate the sum of all numbers into a variable called "count" one would typically use the following script. Note that as the data file is not CSV, it is necessary to use a Java regular expression "\s".

File open file="C:\numbers.txt"
Eval count=0
Var _FILE_PARSE_COUNT=0 _FILE_PARSE_VALUE1=0

for (i=1; {i}<{_FILE_LINE_COUNT}+1; i={i}+1) {
  File parse line={i} pattern="\s"
  for (j=1; {j}<{_FILE_PARSE_COUNT}+1; j={j}+1) {
     Eval count={count}+{_FILE_PARSE_VALUE{j}}
  }
}



File delete  [line=<line_number>]  [column=<column_number>]  [length=<length_in_chars>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
line=<line_number>

- Ordinary line number to insert the text to. Numbering starts from 1. If the line number is out of the range the command fails with exit code of 4.

column=<column_number>

- Ordinary column (character) number to insert the text to on the specified line. Numbering starts from 1. If not specified the command deletes from beginning of the line (column=1). If the column is greater than number of characters on the line the command fails with exit code of 4.

length=<length_in_chars>

- Optional length specifying how many characters should be deleted. The resulting delete area may exceed the text line bounds and in such a case the delete operation is applied to the terminating new line character and then to the following line or lines. If the length exceeds the the file size, all the content file content after the specified position is deleted. If the length parameter is not specified the command deletes just to the end of the specified line including the new line character.

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

RETURNS
The command returns 0 (SUCCESS) if the text is located and deleted successfully or 4 (INVALID_POSITION) if the line and column parameters do not point to a valid position in the file. The command saves the deleted text to the _FILE_DELETED variable. As the delete operation changes file size and eventually number of lines, it updates variables from the Counter group as well as the Line one.

EXAMPLES

File delete line="1"

- Delete the first line (including the new line character).


File delete line="2" length={_FILE_LENGTH}

- Delete everything from the second line to the end of file and leave just the first line.

for (i=1; {i}<{_FILE_LINE_COUNT}; i={i}+1) {
  File delete line={i} length=10
}

- Delete first 10 characters on each line.
 

File read line=1
File delete line="1" column={_FILE_LINE_LENGTH}+1 length=1

- Remove the new line character located at the end of the first line and join the first and second line.




File close  [id=<identifier>]  [save=<true|false>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name for the file. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one file at a time. If multiple file are being opened, the identifier identifies the file in other File commands. Once an ID is specified it must be used in all subsequent File commands.

save=<true|false>

- True saves the file to the file system, false discards any changes. Default value is "true". The file is saved only if it has been modified by the script and/or if another output file was specified.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS) or 2 (FAILED_TO_SAVE) on an I/O error. It also clears up all File specific variables from the context.

EXAMPLES

File open file=test.txt
...
File close

- Close the file. If the content has been modified, save the changes to the test.txt file.


File open file=test.txt outfile=test2.txt
...
File close

- Close the file. The content loaded from test.txt will be written to test2.txt regardless of whether it has been modified or not.

File open file=test.txt id="testfile"
...
File close id="testfile" save=false

- Close the file and discard any eventual changes. As the "testfile" ID was assigned to the file in "File open", it must be specified in the "File close" one as well as in any other File call between these two commands.


3.4.2 Excel

DESCRIPTION
Excel - Read from and/or write to Microsoft Excel documents. The command allows to navigate through XLS documents, read, write and search for cell values and deal with a subset of Excel supported formats. The command takes advantage of the Apache POI framework and as such it is subject to its limitations.

The command defines this set of actions:
A typical work flow consists of the following logical steps:
  1. Open an existing Excel document ("Excel open") or create a new one ("Excel create"). If the script works with multiple documents at a time, each file must be tagged by an ID and all subsequent Excel commands must reference it. This step populates variables with the file name, path and structure.
  2. Select (open) or create a spread sheet. Opening of an Excel document through "Excel open" automatically selects the first spread sheet in the workbook unless the sheet is explicitly specified by the parameter. Creating of a new document through "Excel create" automatically creates and selects one default spread sheet with the default "Sheet1" name unless another name is explicitly specified. To change the spread sheet selection later on call "Excel select". To create and select a new spread sheet use "Excel create". Each change in spread sheet selection populates a the Sheet variable group describing number of spread sheets available and the name and number of the currently selected one.
  3. To read a cell call "Excel select" or search for a cell value using "Excel find". If the cell is found successfully, its value, type and format are provided in form of script variables. If the cell is contains a formula you may retrieve either its text or the resulting value depending on the "evaluate" parameter. Like sheets, the cell reference is cached and a sequence of commands operating over a single cell doesn't have to specify the coordinates (either row/cell number or reference) in each command instance.
  4. To modify a cell use the "Excel set" command. If the format is not explicitly specified, the command checks for number or boolean values and eventually defaults to string. If the coordinates point to a cell which doesn't exist, it is created.
  5. To close a document and save or discard changes call the "Excel close" command. This step is optional and all documents are closed and eventually saved automatically when the script finishes.
The command defines these variables:

Who Creates and When Variable Name Description
Excel open,
Excel create

(so called "File Group")
 _EXCEL_FILE
 Document file path (full/absolute).
_EXCEL_FILENAME
 Document file name.
_EXCEL_OUTFILE Output file path (full/absolute) if it was explicitly specified.
_EXCEL_OUTFILENAME Output file name if it was explicitly specified.
_EXCEL_SHEET_COUNT
 Number of spread sheets available in the document.
Excel open
Excel create
Excel select (sheet)
Excel set sheet=<>
Excel find sheet=<>

("Sheet Group")
 _EXCEL_SHEET_NAME
 Name of the currently selected sheet.
_EXCEL_SHEET_NUMBER
 Number of the currently selected sheet.
_EXCEL_SHEET_ROWS
 Number of rows available in the currently selected sheet.
Excel set
Excel select (cell)
Excel find

("Cell Group")
 		_EXCEL_CELL_COLUMN
 Ordinary column number of the selected/found/modified cell.
_EXCEL_CELL_ROW
 Ordinary row number of the cell.
_EXCEL_CELL_TYPE Cell type; one of [BLANK, BOOLEAN, ERROR, FORMULA, NUMERIC or STRING]
_EXCEL_CELL_VALUE
 Cell value (as a string).
_EXCEL_CELL_REF
 Excel compatible cell reference, for example "A1" or "J10".

The command in general returns 0 on success or one of the folowing exit codes:

Exit Code Pseudo code
 Description
0
 SUCCESS
 Successful completion.
1
 FAILED_TO_OPEN
 Failed to open the input file. Returned just by "Excel open".
2
 FAILED_TO_SAVE
 Failed to save to the file. Returned just by "Excel close".
3 FAILED_TO_CREATE Failed to create a new document or sheet. Returned just by "Excel create".
4
 SHEET_NOT_FOUND
 The row and/or column parameters do not point to an existing cell. Returned by all cell-reading commands supporting "row" and "column".
5
 CELL_NOT_FOUND Failed to find a cell with the given coordinates or with the specified value ("Excel find").

Syntax and parameters of each action are described in details below.
  
SYNOPSIS

Excel open [file=<Excel _file>]  [id=<identifier>]  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
file=<Excel_file>

- Excel file path (absolute or relative). Relative path is resolved against the script directory (meaning the folder containing the calling script).

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name of the open document. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one Excel document at a time. If multiple documents are being opened, the identifier identifies the document in other Excel commands.

sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>

- The spread sheet to select. It may be specified either by its name or ordinary number starting from 1. This parameter is optional and if it is not present, the command selects (opens) the first spread sheet by default.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS) or 1 (FAILED_TO_OPEN). On success it populates variables from the File and Sheet variable group.

EXAMPLES

Excel open file="data.xls"

- Open a MS Excel document located in the same directory as the script in read/write mode.

Excel open file="C:\Data\data.xls" outfile="newdata.xls"

- Open a MS Excel document located in the specified directory in the read only mode. When the document is closed, save the content and eventually all changes into the specified output file in the script directory. If the output file exists it will be overwritten.



Excel create file=<Excel _file>  [id=<identifier>]  [sheet=<sheet_name>]
Excel create sheet=<sheet_name>  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
file=<Excel_file>

- Excel file path (absolute or relative). Relative path is resolved against the script directory (meaning the folder containing the calling script). If the file exists, it is overwritten.

id=<identifier>

- An identifier or name of the created document. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one Excel document at a time. If multiple documents are being opened, the identifier identifies the document in other Excel commands.

sheet=<sheet_name>

- Name of the spread sheet to create. If the command is called with the file parameter specified to create a new file, the sheet parameter is optional. If it is not present, the command behaves the same way as MS Excel and creates a default spread sheet called "Sheet1" in the newly created file.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS) or 3 (FAILED_TO_CREATE) on failure, for example when a sheet of the specified name already exists. The command populates variables from the File and Sheet variable groups.

EXAMPLES
Excel create file="C:\Data\log.xls"

- Create a new Excel document in the memory and associate it with the specified file for output. The command will also create a sheet called "Sheet1" and select it.

Excel create file="C:\Data\log.xls" sheet="Data"
- Same as previous example but the sheet will be named "Data".

Excel create sheet="Data"

- Create a new sheet with named "Data" in the currently opened document.



Excel select  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]  [id=<identifier>]
Excel select  [row=<row_number>]  [column=<column_number_or_id>]  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]  [id=<identifier>]
Excel select  [ref=<cell_id>]  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]  [id=<identifier>] 
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
row=<row_number>
column=<column_number_or_id>

- Row and column ordinary numbers identifying the cell to select. Numbering starts from 1. The column may be in addition referenced by alphabetical ID used in MS Excel ("A"-"ZZ"). For example, "column=C" is equal to "column=3". The "row" and "column" parameters must be always present together. Though the parameters are marked above as mandatory, the reference to the selected cell is cached and sequences of commands operating over a single cell do not have repeat the either "column"/"row" or "ref" coordinates.

ref=<cell_id>

- Cell ID compatible with MS Excel referencing, for example "A1" or "J10". It is provided as an alternative way of cell referencing. The parameter should not be used together with the row/column parameter pair.

sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>

- The spread sheet to select (open). It may be specified either by its name or ordinary number starting from 1. If the command is being used just to select a sheet (the first form in the list above), this parameter is mandatory. Other command forms targeting a particular cell do not require it and if it is not present, the command will operate over the last selected sheet.

evaluate=<true|false>

- Flag controlling how FORMULA cells are handled. If it is "true" the cell value will be the calculated formula result. Otherwise the cell value stored under the _EXCEL_CELL_VALUE will contain the formula text. If the targeted cell is not a FORMULA one, this parameter is ignored. The default value is "false".

id=<identifier_or_name>

- An identifier or name of the open document. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one Excel document at a time. If multiple documents are being opened, the identifier identifies the document in other Excel commands.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS), 4 (SHEET_NOT_FOUND) or 5 (CELL_NOT_FOUND). The command populates variables from the Sheet and Cell variable groups.

EXAMPLES
Excel select sheet=2

- Select second sheet in the document and store its properties into the Sheet variables..

Excel select sheet="Data"
- Select sheet called "Data" in the document.

Excel select row=2 column=4
- Select cell on the specified position in the current sheet and retrieve its properties into the Cell variables.

Excel select sheet="Results" ref=A5
- Select the "Results" sheet and then select cell on the specified position (fifth row, first column). Both the Sheet and Cell variable groups will be updated with the sheet/cell properties.


Excel find  [value=<value>]  [type=<type>]  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]  [evaluate=<true|false>]  [id=<identifier>]
Excel find  [pattern=<regular_expression>]  [type=<type>]  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]  [evaluate=<true|false>]  [id=<identifier>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
value=<value>

- String representation of the value to search for. The current sheet will be searched row by row for a cell having the specified value and the first matching one will be selected.

pattern=<sheet_name_or_index>

- Search for a cell with a value matching a regular expression. The expression must comply with the Java Pattern specification.

type=<type>

- Type of cell to limit the search to. It must be one of [BLANK, BOOLEAN, ERROR, FORMULA, NUMERIC, STRING]. If the parameter is not specified, all cell types are searched.

sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>

- The spread sheet to select (open). It may be specified either by its name or ordinary number starting from 1. This parameter is optional and if it is not present the command will operate over the last selected sheet.

evaluate=<true|false>

- Flag controlling how FORMULA cells are handled. If it is "true" the cell value will be the calculated formula result. Otherwise the specified value will be compared to the formula text. The default value is "false".

id=<identifier_or_name>

- An identifier or name of the open document. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one Excel document at a time. If multiple documents are being opened, the identifier identifies the document in other Excel commands.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS), 4 (SHEET_NOT_FOUND) or 5 (CELL_NOT_FOUND). If the cell is located successfully the command populates variables from the Sheet and Cell variable groups.

EXAMPLES
Excel find value="Test data"
if ({_EXIT_CODE} > 0) {
  Warning "The \"Test data\" cell was not found."
  Exit 1
}
Excel select row={_EXCEL_CELL_ROW}+1 column={_EXCEL_CELL_COLUMN}
Type "{_EXCEL_CELL_VALUE}"

- Search the current spread sheet for a cell containing the text "Test data". If successful populate the Cell variables with cell properties and type content of the cell below the found one. If the search fails, record a warning and exit the script with the exit code of 1.

Excel find value="2" evaluate=true
- Search the current sheet for any numeric cell containing the number of 2 or any text cel containing "2". As the evaluate flag is on, each cell of the FORMULA type will be calculated (evaluated) and compared to the value of 2.

Excel find sheet="Data" pattern="boo.*"
- Select sheet called "Data" in the document and search it for the first value starting with "boo".

Excel find type=FORMULA pattern="SUM\(.*\)"
- Search the current sheet for the first cell of FORMULA type containing the summary formula and retrieve its properties into the Cell variables. As the "evaluate" flag is not specified and defaults to false, the _EXCEL_CELL_VALUE will be populated with the formula text.

Excel find type=FORMULA pattern="SUM\(.*\)" evaluate=true
- Same as the previous example. The _EXCEL_CELL_VALUE will however contain result of the formula, i.e. a number equal to the sum of the cells specified in the formula text.



Excel set  [row=<row_number>]  [column=<column_number_or_id>]  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]  [id=<identifier>]  [type=<type>]  [value=<value>]
Excel set  [ref=<cell_id>]  [sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>]  [id=<identifier>]  [type=<type>]  [value=<value>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
row=<row_number>
column=<column_number_or_id>

- Row and column ordinary numbers identifying the cell. Numbering starts from 1. The column may be in addition referenced by alphabetical ID used in MS Excel ("A"-"ZZ"). For example, "column=C" is equal to "column=3". The "row" and "column" parameters must be always present together. Though the parameters are marked above as mandatory, the reference to the selected cell is cached and sequences of commands operating over a single cell do not have to repeat coordinates.

ref=<cell_id>

- Cell ID compatible with MS Excel, for example "A1" or "J10". It is provided as an alternative way of cell referencing. The parameter should not been used together with the row/column parameter pair.

sheet=<sheet_name_or_index>

- The spread sheet to select (open). It may be specified either by its name or ordinary number starting from 1. If the command is being used just to select a sheet (the first command syntax form in the list above), this parameter is mandatory. Other command forms targeting a particular cell do not require it and if it is not present, the command will operate over the last selected sheet.

id=<identifier_or_name>

- An identifier or name of the open document. This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script opens/creates just one Excel document at a time. If multiple documents are being opened, the identifier identifies the document in other Excel commands.

type=<type>

- Type of cell to set. It must be one of [BLANK, BOOLEAN, ERROR, FORMULA, NUMERIC, STRING]. If the parameter is not specified, the type defaults to STRING.

value=<value>

- Cell value to set. It must be aligned with the cell type. For example when the cell type is NUMERIC, the value should be a valid number. If the "type" parameter is not specified, the command guesses whether it is a number, a boolean value or a string and sets the cell type accordingly. To override this behavior specify the type explicitly.

The value may contain a numeric expression but the type must be explicitly set to NUMERIC to tell the compiler that numeric evaluation is needed.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS), 4 (SHEET_NOT_FOUND) or 5 (CELL_NOT_FOUND). If the cell is located successfully the command sets the value and/or cell type and populates variables from the Sheet and Cell variable groups.

EXAMPLES
Excel set ref=A5 value="Test data"

- Set value of the A5 cell in the current sheet to "Test data". The cell type will be STRING.

Excel set row=1 column=A value="2" sheet="Results"
- Select the "Results" sheet and set value of the A1 cell to 2. As the value is apparently a numeric one the cell type will be automatically set to NUMERIC.

# Declare the variable as numeric to supress compiler error
 Var _EXCEL_CELL_VALUE=1
Excel set row=1 column=A value="2"
Excel set value={_EXCEL_CELL_VALUE}+1 type=NUMERIC
- Set the A2 cell value to 2 and then increment it to 3. Declaration of the _EXCEL_CELL_VALUE is needed only to supress the compiler error when trying to evaluate the value.

Excel set row=5 column=1 type=FORMULA value="SUM(A1:A4)"
Excel select evaluate=true
- Set value of the cell at A5 to the summary formula of the A1-A4 cells and get the result.


Excel close  [id=<identifier>]  [save=<true|false>]
* Red color indicates obligatory parameters

OPTIONS
id=<identifier_or_name>

- An identifier or name of the open document. which should be closed This parameter doesn't have to be specified if the script handles just one Excel document at a time. If multiple documents are being opened, the identifier identifies the document in the Excel commands.

save=<true|false>

- True saves the document to the file system, false discards any changes. Default value is "true". The file is saved only if it has been modified by the script.

RETURNS
The open command returns either 0 (SUCCESS) or 2 (FAILED_TO_SAVE) on an I/O error. It also clears up all Excel specific variables from the context.

EXAMPLES

Excel open file=test.xls
...
Excel close

- Close the file. If the content has been modified, save the changes to the test.xls file.


Excel open file=test.xls outfile=test2.xls
...
Excel close

- Close the file. The content loaded from test.xls will be written to test2.xls regardless of whether it has been modified or not.

Excel open file=test.xls id="testfile"
...
Excel close id="testfile" save=false

- Close the file and discard any eventual changes. As the "testfile" ID was assigned to the file in "Excel open", it must be specified in the "Excel close" one as well as in any other Excel call between these two commands.