Extracting TestStand™ File Global Variable Data Using LabVIEW™

TestStand File Globals are variables that are scoped to a sequence file and are accessible from any sequence or step within that file. You can view and edit File Globals in the Variables pane. The Value column allows you to modify string, numeric, and Boolean values.

This article explains how to extract TestStand File Global variable data from an external LabVIEW VI using the TestStand API through ActiveX.

Follow these steps to extract data from the File Globals container:

1. Open an ActiveX session to the TestStand Engine class.
2. Create a Property Node (ActiveX) and obtain a reference to the sequence file's FileGlobalsDefaultValues property.
3. Create an Invoke Node (ActiveX) and select the GetNumSubProperties method to determine the number of containers.
4. Create an Invoke Node (ActiveX) and select the GetNthSubPropertyName method with options = 0 to retrieve the container name.
5. Create an Invoke Node (ActiveX) and select the GetNthSubProperty method with options = 0 to retrieve the container reference.
6. Create an Invoke Node (ActiveX) and select the GetNumSubProperties method to determine the number of parameters within the container.
7. Create an Invoke Node (ActiveX) and select the GetNthSubPropertyName method with options = 0 to retrieve each parameter name.
8. Create an Invoke Node (ActiveX) and select the GetNthSubProperty method with options = 0 to retrieve each parameter reference.
9. Create a Property Node (ActiveX) and select the Type property to identify the parameter data type.
10. Create a Property Node (ActiveX) and select the TypeName property to retrieve the parameter type name.

The procedure above uses the GetNthSubProperty method to iterate through each variable and uses the Type property to determine whether the variable is a numeric, string, Boolean, or container data type. If the variable is a container, repeat the same process recursively for the nested properties.

Refer to the following example VI for details on the required wiring and connections:

Note: This image is a LabVIEW snippet, which includes LabVIEW code that you can reuse in your project. To use a snippet, right-click the image, save it to your computer, and drag the file onto your LabVIEW diagram.

After executing the VI, the File Global data is extracted successfully and written to an .ini file: