Is it possible to auto-increment test case IDs?

[lise_gregersen]

In the TestLog userguide there is a small description about setting default values (page 50). In this section it is described how you can set 'Number of auto-increment digits' and 'Auto-increment step size', but how do I use these? When creating a new case, I can get the other default values to work, but not these 2 - is there anything specific that I need to do?

[Tim (PassMark)]

It sounds like you need to enable the "Incremental ID's on New" and "Incremental ID's on Duplicate" options in the TestLog general options.

The number of digits is how many digits are appended to the ID name and the step size is how much an ID will increase per increment (to allow spaces for other test cases to be inserted in future if required).

Once these are set turning on the Incremental ID's on duplicate / new options in the TestLog general options will start adding a number of digits to the end of a test case name.

For example, with an step size of 1 and digit number set to 4, when making a new test case the default name will be "0000", edit the name so it is saved as "Test0000". Then when you create another new test case (or duplicate the existing one) the name should be automatically be generated as "Test0001".

[nsBB]

I like this feature a lot, but I'd like it even more if it recognized numbers at the beginning of a test case's name. That way, my test case IDs could have some kind of meaningful description. For example, for ordering purposes, I currently have to have all of my tests start out with the same name (test001, test002, etc). If the incremental IDs recognized my numbers at the beginning of a test, I could have tests with meaningful titles, for example, "0010 - Login", "0020 - create a user", and so forth.

[nsBB]

If this were implemented, I guess the natural question that would follow would be, "why have a test case ID and a test case name? Why not just combine the two?" But that would mean a schema change, which may cause problems with existing databases. Thoughts?

[Tim (PassMark)]

We'll keep in mind the option of placing the digits at the start or end of the test case for a future version.

The idea of having a separate ID and the title is because the Windows path length if relatively short and using long descriptive ID will lead to file path lengths issues fairly quickly.

We're looking at the possibility of combining the test title with the ID for display in the treeview so the ID will not have to be as descriptive.

[lise_gregersen]

Thanks

Thanks for the reply. This was exactly what I was missing

[nsBB]

That makes sense. Thanks.