We’re excited to announce that we recently added a Visual Studio Code extension to AltWalker.
Through this extension, we want to help users to both edit and visualize JSON models within the VS Code.
How it can help you
AltWalker Model Visualizer is an open-source extension that comes to help everyone who writes and executes tests using a model-based testing tool like AltWalker or GraphWalker.
When implementing or updating the tests, you might need both the code and the models. That’s the main purpose of the extension, to have visibility over the tests and models from the same place.
It will allow you to create new models or edit existing ones. We find it very handy when existing models have to be updated based on the tests. In this case, you can easily see the changes reflected in your model without having to leave the VS Code editor.
How it works
The extension can be installed from the VS Code extension marketplace, and after installation, it’s ready to be used, no other dependencies are needed. It uses a library called Model-Visualizer, which renders a graph from a JSON file. It expects the JSON format used by AltWalker and GraphWalker.
After the installation, if you open a JSON file with a model, you can press ctrl+shift+v or right-click Launch Model Visualizer to start the extension and your model will be rendered in a new side panel. As you change something in the JSON file, the changes are reflected in real-time on the graph. If you have multiple JSON files open, the graph will be rendered for the one that is active in the editor.
If you are familiar with editing JSON files you can create a new model from scratch using snippets to help in creating the model faster and easier. If you don’t like to work with JSON files you can try out our tool Model-Editor to build a model without writing code.
More information about the extension, snippets and useful commands can be found here. Join our gitter room for any questions or feedback!