Naming conventions
CAT recognizes a property under several spellings and, for some properties, under several names — so every source can keep its own naming style.
The documentation names each property in one canonical form — the test reference calls one of them Test suite, for example. That is not the only accepted spelling, and for some properties not the only accepted name. CAT matches property names against a set of synonyms, and the match is not case sensitive.
Why synonyms exist
Definitions do not only live in the project file. They live in database tables, in stored procedure result sets, in worksheets, in other YAML files — see Lists. Each of those has its own naming culture:
- in PostgreSQL an unquoted identifier is folded to lower case, so a column is naturally
test_suite; naming itTestSuitemeans quoting it everywhere and working against the language; - a worksheet header or a report column reads as
Test Suite, with a space; - YAML written by hand next to application code is often
TestSuite.
Matching by synonym means no source has to adopt a naming style that is unnatural for it. You keep the convention your team and your storage already use, and CAT reads it.
Accepted forms
For every documented property name, three written forms are accepted:
| Written form | Example | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| With spaces | Test Suite |
The canonical form used in this documentation |
| With underscores | Test_Suite |
Spaces replaced by underscores |
| Without separators | TestSuite |
Spaces removed |
Casing is free on top of that, so tEsT sUiTe and TEST_SUITE are both understood. Whitespace around the name is ignored.
Some properties answer to more than one name, and each of those names accepts all three forms. Test suite is also just Suite; a test’s name is Name or Test name; a timeout is Timeout or Timeout in seconds. The property reference pages list the names each property answers to.
The same applies to the top-level keys of the project file. Get list of tests from is also matched as Get_List_of_Tests_from and GetListOfTestsFrom.
test-suite) is not matched. If you need it, let us know — it is easy to add.Where the matching applies
Property names are matched the same way wherever the definition comes from: keys in the project file, keys in other YAML files, column names returned by a database query or a stored procedure, header cells in a worksheet or a CSV file.
Each property is matched on its own, so different definitions do not have to agree on a style — a list of tests read from PostgreSQL can use test_suite, or even suite, while the tests written in the project file use Test suite. Within one document, staying with a single style is still worth it for whoever reads the file next.