Using the test results for other tools

A Recorder for non-developpers

But often developers don't work alone : you may have a team contributing to the same code base next door, a manager a little bit further away and even a team of testers or power users on the other side of the planet.

For them as well tests' results are valuable pieces of information ! They just need to be formatted and archived somewhere. The Recorder allows you to grab all output to a simple PHP array.

<?php
require_once('simpletest/autorun.php');
require_once('simpletest/ui/recorder.php');

$group = new TestSuite();
$group->addTestFile('test_of_module_ship.php');
$group->addTestFile('test_of_module_pay.php');

$recorder = new Recorder();
$group->run($recorder);
?>

Within this $recorder object lies the test suite information. Let's dump the $recorder->results variable and check what's in it :

<?php
array(4) {
  [0]=>
  array(4) {
    ["time"]=>
    int(1173951256)
    ["status"]=>
    string(6) "Passed"
    ["test"]=>
    string(129) "examples/test_of_module_ship.php->TestUsingParcelForce->testParcelForceIsFine"
    ["message"]=>
    string(97) " at [examples/test_of_module_ship.php line 7]"
  }
  [1]=>
  array(4) {
    ["time"]=>
    int(1173951256)
    ["status"]=>
    string(6) "Passed"
    ["test"]=>
    string(154) "examples/test_of_module_ship.php->TestUsingMyOwnAirplane->testUsingMyOwnAirplaneOnlyWorksForSmallGifts"
    ["message"]=>
    string(134) "Expected false, got [Boolean: false] at [examples/test_of_module_ship.php line 13]"
  }
  [2]=>
  array(4) {
    ["time"]=>
    int(1173951256)
    ["status"]=>
    string(6) "Passed"
    ["test"]=>
    string(135) "examples/test_of_module_pay.php->TestPayForParcelForce->testPayForParcelForceIsFine"
    ["message"]=>
    string(96) " at [examples/test_of_module_pay.php line 7]"
  }
  [3]=>
  array(4) {
    ["time"]=>
    int(1173951256)
    ["status"]=>
    string(6) "Passed"
    ["test"]=>
    string(155) "examples/test_of_module_pay.php->TestPayForMyOwnAirplane->testPayForMyOwnAirplaneOnlyWorksForSmallGifts"
    ["message"]=>
    string(133) "Expected false, got [Boolean: false] at [examples/test_of_module_pay.php line 13]"
  }
}
?>

Exploring the Recorder results

Each element of the $recoder->results array contains one assertion's information :

• time : when the assertion was executed, in a timestamp format.
• status : either Passed or Failed
• test : the name of the test
• message : the actual message, useful for understanding what went wrong

Now iterating throught the results becomes really easy...

<?php
require_once('simpletest/autorun.php');
require_once('simpletest/ui/recorder.php');

$group = new TestSuite();
$group->addTestFile('test_of_module_ship.php');
$group->addTestFile('test_of_module_pay.php');
$recorder = new Recorder();
$group->run($recorder);

foreach (recorder->results as $result) {
    if ($result->status == "Failed") {
        do_something_while_it_is_time(result);
    }
}

?>