JUnit fail action

[Rachel Swailes]

Hi there

I'm busy writing tests with JUnit and I want to know if there is a way to perform a specific action every time any test fails.

For example, show the xml log output in a browser or something. At the moment, when it fails I have to manually find the log file I'm generating and open it and after the hundredth time today it would be really awesome if it could open the file on it's own.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks,
Rachel

[Ilja Preuss]

How do you run the tests? What do you need the log file for? Don't you use a gui testrunner?

[Lasse Koskela]

Since you're talking about XML log output, I assume you're using the <junit/> Ant task? If that's the case, how about also using the <junitreport/> task for generating a pretty HTML report for your test run?

Also, you could do some Ant trickery to launch the report in a web browser when some tests fail:

<project name="...">
 
    <target name="test" 
            description="This is the 'public' task for running unit tests. It coordinates the sequence of subtargets for running tests, generating the report, and viewing the report in case of failures"
            depends="-run-tests, -generate-report, -view-report" />
 
    <target name="-run-tests">
        <junit errorproperty="tests.failed" failureproperty="tests.failed" ... />
    </target>
 
    <target name="-generate-report">
        <junitreport todir="./reports">
            <fileset dir="./reports" includes="TEST-*.xml"/>
            <report todir="${junit.report.dir}"/>
        </junitreport>
    </target>
 
    <target name="-view-report" if="tests.failed">
        <exec executable="start.exe" os="Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003">
            <arg line="${junit.report.dir}\index.html"/>
        </exec>
        <exec executable="htmlview" os="Linux, SunOS">
            <arg line="${junit.report.dir}/index.html"/>
        </exec>
    </target>
 
</project>

[Rachel Swailes]

Hi there

The logs files aren't the direct output of the test run. The test script is testing code that generates xml logs based on given criteria.

The ant idea works well, so that's gone in. Thanks for the advice!

Rachel

[Ilja Preuss]

Why do you need to take a look at them regularly? That seems to be counter to the whole purpose of automated unit tests to me...