VI Tester Advanced Comparisons (VITAC) provides some more advanced comparison VIs to support use of VI tester in unit testing.
If you are already using VI tester you can substitute some of the test VIs for these to get:
- Comparisons not supported e.g. 1D arrays.
- Better reporting e.g. where in a string is a failure.
VITAC requires LabVIEW 2015 or later and VI Package Manager 2017 or later on Windows operating systems.
It depends on JKI VI Tester which can also be installed through VI Package Manager.
It is available on the LabVIEW Tools Network or A VIP file is provided in the releases section of this repository. Install this using VI package manager 2017 or later to use.
Compares two 1D numeric arrays and returns a pass/fail if any elements exceed the provided delta value (default = 0)
The results string will identify the numbers that don't match as well as the array index.
The VI takes EXT but has been tested to work with coerced SGL, DBL and integers.
Compares two strings and passes if they match.
The results string will tell you which characters don't match (with slash code display) and provide an excerpt around this point for context.
Compares a string to a regular expression and passes if it matches. This VI uses the same PCRL regular expressions as the matches pattern VI.
The results string will include the full string and regex if it fails.
Searches element in array, and returns pass if element is found. If expected index (optional) does not equal to -1, additionally compares found index with expected; and fails if they are not equal.
This polymorphic VI is implemented for EXT, DBL, SGL, Integers, String, Boolean arrays. The reason for having implementation of floating point arrays separately is comparison results of numbers with different precision (like, "5,2" EXT != "5,2" DBL).
Compares two timestamps and passes if they match.
VI internally converts timestamps to double numbers, and compares them, optionally with delta.
In case of failure, failure message contains exptected and actual timestamps.
Compares two 1D string arrays and returns a pass if arrays are equal.
The results string will identify the strings that don't match as well as the array index.
String comparison is optionally case-sensitive.
Default is case-sensitive match.
Compares two 1D boolean arrays and returns a pass when arrays are equal.
The results string will identify the elements that don't match as well as the array index.
In addition to the comparison VIs we have included some templates that we use at Wiresmith Technology to produce better tests.
Given, When, Then drops a flat sequence structure with four frames designed to make tests much easier to read and understand. They are:
- Given: The test preconditions.
- When: The VI/procedure being tested.
- Then: Where you perform your comparisons and check your results.
- Clean Up: A convenient place to close references etc. without interfering with the VI Tester error chain.
Learn more at https://devs.wiresmithtech.com/blog/given-when-then/
This is a template for testing that an event has fired. You should drop it into the "then" case for comparisons. Either remove the dynamic registration functions or move the event registration to the Given case.
Learn more at https://devs.wiresmithtech.com/blog/testing-events-vi-tester/
A project is installed into the LabVIEW example finder showing usage of each component as individual tests. To run them:
- Search the example finder for VITAC and load the project.
- Open VI tester and run the tests.
You can open each test and play with the values to try different scenarios.
This is very much an early stage library. Some additional features have been considered but most currently have workarounds with the above support. We will look to add to this in the future though.
- 2D/nD Array. This is very hard to make expandable so currently I recommend just looping over 1D array comparison. Could consider 2D array in the future.
- Waveform comparison. (Workaround: Split parts and use other comparison VIs.)
- Error Comparions for codes and displayable text. (Workaround: Split the error and use Pass If Matches Regular Expression on the source string)
Feel free to fork this project to fix any bugs. If you have ideas that you want to contribute then create an issue in the issue log and we can work together to get it into the library.
The project source is in LabVIEW 2015 SP1, please use this version for edits.
For support, please create an issue on this page so we can work through the problem.
This project was setup by James McNally at Wiresmith Technology. You can get in contact on here as JamesMc86, NI forums as JamesMcN or twitter @jamesmc86