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Conditional Steps in Testing

Conditional steps are logic based actions that adapt to your application's state during test execution. While they can address known scenarios, they cannot handle completely unexpected pop-ups or behaviors.

note

Manual Setup Required: Qualiti AI currently doesn’t generate conditional steps; users must define them manually.

Using Conditional Steps​

Conditional steps execute specific actions based on the state of the application during a test run. This ensures your tests can adapt dynamically to various conditions.

For example, you can:

  • Dismiss a cookie banner if it appears.
  • Adjust timeouts for slower-loading pages.
  • Handle prompts that ask users to take action(e.g., “Connect Google account”)

There are two main ways of setting up your test with conditional actions:

  • Plain Conditional
  • Reactive Handler

Plain Conditional​

At a specific place in the test case, branching logic like an if statement checks a condition, and executes code only if the condition is met. Plain conditionals are simply a feature of Python (see docs). Since Qualiti lets you directly write Python code, you can take full advantage of Python's flexibility.

Plain Conditional Example​

Scenario: Your test requires at a certain step that all notifications be cleared, but you cannot predict if there will be any notifications to clear. If there are no notifications, the "Dismiss All" button is not present on the page, making a regular non-conditional step fail. If there are notifications, then the "Dismiss All" button is present on the page and the test needs to click it before moving on for later steps to be successful.

dismiss_button = page.locator(".notifications-inbox").get_by_role("button", name="Dismiss All")
if dismiss_button.is_visible():
    dismiss_button.click()

Reactive Handler​

Early in the test, you register a function that will be called whenever a condition is later met. Reactive handlers are a feature of Playwright; you can read the page.add_locator_handler docs here.

tip

Your step that registers a reactive handler using page.add_locator_handler should happen early in the test, before the condition may arise. This allows the test to react appropriately when the condition is met later on.

Reactive Handler Example​

Scenario: A promotional popup may appear, but it is unpredictable when the pop may appear, if at all. When the popup appears, it blocks other interactions with the page and must be dismissed before the test can proceed.

def handle_promo_popup():
    page.get_by_role("button", name="No Thanks!").click()

page.add_locator_handler(page.locator(".promo-popup"), handle_promo_popup)

This code sets up a function handle_promo_popup that will be called whenever .promo-popup is found on the page. The function handle_promo_popup may never be called (if the popup never shows), or it may be called multiple times (if the popup shows repeatedly).

How to Add Conditional Steps​

  1. Open the specific test case where you want to add a conditional step.
  2. Identify the step where a conditional action is required.
  3. Add the appropriate Playwright code to handle the condition.

For more details on adding or editing test steps, refer to our Test Case Steps.