Get HTML output from Test::Unit by using RSpec !?

Test::Unit‘s lack of pretty xml/html output led me to look around to see what was available. Turns out that there’s a very simple way to get html output… run your Test::Unit tests with rspec! Here’s a contrived and simple example of how it’s done.

We’ll start with a file called test_unit_to_rspec.rb containing only two tests; one that passes and one that fails. Here’s the code:

require "rubygems"
require "test/unit"
class SomeTests < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_that_passes
    assert(true)
  end
  def test_that_fails
    assert(false)
  end
end

To run this, we call ruby test_unit_to_rspec.rb and we get the following output:

Loaded suite /Users/nat/dev/test_unit_to_rspec
Started
F.
Finished in 0.011906 seconds.
1) Failure:
test_that_fails:8
is not true.
2 tests, 2 assertions, 1 failures, 0 errors

A ‘.’ and an ‘F’ in the result tells us that one test passed and one failed. Notice, no pretty html. No xml. This is a sad state of affairs and needs to be fixed. We want pretty. We want red. We want green. We want output that will be useful to people other than the test team. So… to fix this…

First, you’ll need to install the syntax gem (gem install syntax). This adds extra prettiness to the output – and that’s what we’re about at the moment! Then, in our test_unit_to_rspec.rb file…

…replace :

require "test/unit"

…with:

require "spec/test/unit"

The new code will look like this:

require "rubygems"
require "spec/test/unit"
class SomeTests < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_that_passes
    assert(true)
  end
  def test_that_fails
    assert(false)
  end
end

Next, run your tests using the following command (notice, no ruby in the command):

spec test_unit_to_rspec.rb -f h > results.html

When the run is finished, you’ll find pretty html output in the new file named results.html; here’s what it looks like:

Pretty! Red! Green! Summaries! The code that failed! A whole new world of beautiful (and useful)…

Note that this is only the first step in converting to rspec from test::unit. Doing the above will give you none of the power of rspec, only the pretty output. Also, I imagine that as I get around to converting bigger test::unit projects, conversion won’t be this easy…

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