Environments

In Qualflare, an environment labels where tests ran, such as staging; every new project starts with four, development, staging, production and qa, and every launch belongs to exactly one.

This page lists every field, default and rule of environments, and how the app and the CLI use them.

Why environments are separate from launches

A launch is a single test run. An environment is a label that many launches share. Separating the two means:

• The same suite can run against staging today and production tomorrow, and you can compare the results.
• The Launches list and the Overview page can be filtered by environment.
• Each launch keeps the environment it ran in.

Environment fields

Each environment has three text fields. The form needs at least 3 characters in each.

Identifier

The value the CLI and API use, for example staging, up to 100 characters. It is unique within the project and case-sensitive: Production and production are different identifiers. You can't change it in the app.

Name

The display name the app shows, for example Staging, up to 100 characters.

Description

A short note about the environment, up to 256 characters.

Environments have no base URL, variables, secrets, headers, authentication, type, status or default flag, so Start Launch asks you to pick one every time.

Default environments

Every new project starts with four environments:

qf <identifier> collect uses development when you don't choose an environment.

Where environments appear

Environments appear wherever you filter or compare results:

• Launches: the Environment column and filter, and a chip in the launch header (Filters)
• Overview: the Environment filter and the Success Rate by Environment chart (Overview dashboard)
• Defects: the Environment field, column and filter (Create, triage and close defects)
• CLI: qf <identifier> launches list --environment <identifier> (Launches commands)

To type environment filters, see Search, filters and shortcuts.

Environment list

Open Settings > Environments in the project sidebar.

Click Name, Date Created or Date Updated to sort. The list starts sorted by Date Created, newest first. Type in Filter environments... to filter the list by name.

Create an environment

You need the Editor role or higher on the project to create or delete environments. In the web app today, buttons follow your project role.

1. Click Create Environment.
2. Enter an Identifier, a Name and a Description. The form needs at least 3 characters in each field. The identifier and the name can be up to 100 characters.
3. Click Create.

Use short, lowercase identifiers such as staging or staging-eu. They appear in CI commands, and you can't change them in the app.

Edit an environment

The app has no edit action for environments. To use a different identifier, create a new environment. A launch's environment can't be changed after the launch exists.

Delete an environment

1. Open the ⋯ menu on the environment's row.
2. Click Delete.

You can delete an environment only when no launch uses it. Otherwise Qualflare refuses and shows:

environment "<identifier>" still has N launch(es); deleting it would permanently remove them and all of their results. Delete or reassign the launches first.

A launch's environment can't be changed, so the environment stays until every launch in it is deleted.

Use environments from the CLI

qf <identifier> collect sends an environment identifier with every upload:

qf myapp collect results.xml --environment staging

The CLI picks the environment in this order:

1. The --environment (or -e) flag
2. The QF_ENVIRONMENT environment variable
3. The environment a Qualflare reporter wrote into its report file
4. development

The value must match an existing Identifier, not the Name. Matching is case-sensitive: Production and production are different identifiers. The qf <identifier> collect --help text calls the flag "Environment name", but it takes the identifier.

Qualflare doesn't create environments on upload. An unknown identifier is rejected with HTTP 400 and this message, and qf exits with code 1:

environment "<identifier>" does not exist in this project

Create the environment in Settings > Environments, then upload again. See also Environment mismatch and, for pipelines, CI/CD.

Use environments in manual runs

Start Launch asks you to pick an environment every time (Start a launch from suites). With Create Run on a test plan, you pick it in the Test Wizard before the first verdict (Check the environment and language). Either way, it can't be changed once the launch exists.

Errors

Limits

• Every field needs at least 3 characters; Identifier and Name take up to 100 characters, and Description up to 256. See Environment fields.

Related

• Guides: Run manual tests · Run tests: manual and automated
• Reference: Launches · Projects · Project settings
• CLI: --environment