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Using Custom Stepdefs and Virtual Phones

The "Virtual Phone" tutorials will demonstrate how to replace existing built-in Telephony steps with Custom Step Definitions. This is useful if you want to run Feature Files in a simulation environment without using real phones.

In this tutorial we are going to set up a simple telephony Scenario using two phones, A and B. A calls B and after a given call time, B ends the call.

Additionally, we will show how to use five types of Stepdef parameters: {}, {ident}, {phoneTags}, {phoneTag}, and {list}.

For reference material, please refer to the intaQt manual's Custom Compound Steps section.

1. Why Use Custom Stepdefs?

There are two types of Stepdefs in intaQt:

  • Internal Stepdefs (or Built-in Stepdefs) are implemented as part of the intaQt software. They can be used throughout your .feature files as is.

  • Custom Stepdefs are implemented by the intaQt user employing the uisteps and/or steps language. These Stepdefs make use of intaQt's Steps and UI Steps Built-in helper functions to provide custom functionality that is not covered by the internal Stepdefs.

If you want to develop your .feature files using a simulation environment, the built-in Telephony steps can no longer be used, as they trigger real phones. Deactivating the built-in Telephony steps allows the provision of your own custom Telephony steps implementation. These custom steps can trigger your simulation environment instead of using real phones.

Using this method, you can develop your .feature files using a simulation environment and switch to the real phones when appropriate. You can change from one environment to another by switching the configuration.

2. Prerequisites

To execute the test cases in the following tutorials, you first need to run the following products:

  • intaQt

  • intaQt Studio

The easiest way to do this is to open the command line and navigate to the QiTASC directory.

Enter the following:

Windows User

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qitasc start intaqt
qitasc start intaqt-studio

Linux and Mac OS User

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./qitasc start intaqt
./qitasc start intaqt-studio