Display python unittest results in nice, tabular f

Question

I am writing a Pythonic tool which validates the correctness of a certain system. Each validation is written as a Python unittest, and the report looks like:

test_exclude_list_not_empty (__main__.TestRepoLists)
Assert the the exclude list is not empty ... ok
test_include_list_not_empty (__main__.TestRepoLists)
Assert the the include list is not empty ... ok
test_repo_list_not_empty (__main__.TestRepoLists)
Assert the the repo list is not empty ... ok

In my opinion, this format is hard to read, especially for non-Pythonists. Is there any report generator that can generate a report in a nice, tabular form, e.g.:

+----------------------------------------------------------------+-----------+
| Test                                                           |  Status   |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+-----------+
| Assert the the exclude list is not empty                       |  OK       |
| Assert the the include list is not empty                       |  OK       |
| Assert the the repo list is not empty                          |  OK       |
| All the items in the include list should be in the repo list   |  OK       |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+-----------+

Clarification The test suite runs on a remote terminal, so I prefer command line reporting tools.

Answer 1

Take a look at Twisted's Trial.

By default, it uses the TreeReporter test runner, which looks like:

It has the following:

• It's a command line report, just run:

  trial test_name.py

• Colored output: red for failure, green for success

• The report uses a tree like structure. It displays the tests under the TestCases they belong, allowing you to quickly traverse the results to find a specific test. (Although it provides a couple of more reports).

• It also includes a test library, derived from Python's unittest.TestCase. You can use this library by subclassing twisted.trial.unittest.TestCase. This provides a few more assertion methods.

• It includes the option to generate statement coverage for your tests.

Answer 2

This is not exactly what you are asking, but there are several options for having a readable test output there:

• HTMLTestRunner generates easy to use HTML test reports in a tabular form. Here's a sample report.
• nose-html-output plugin for nose test runner
• unittest-xml-reporting - PyUnit-based test runner with JUnit like XML reporting
• nose with --with-xunit option will produce junit xml style reports that are easy to read and convert

Also see:

• How to produce html unit test output in Python?
• Python Unittest Reporting in HTML
• unittest colored output (coloring the output can make results readable too)

If you want to see test results in a tabular form in the console anyway, I think that a good idea would be to write your own nose plugin or test runner based on unittest.TestProgram as it was done in HTMLTestRunner.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

I would like to add my information as a comment into alecxe's answer, but I do not have enough reputation for that.

In case of someone still looking for an answer, I forked HTMLTestRunner into a simple TestRunner, which has a tabular, colored, terminal-friendly output. This is a sample of its output:

The source code is at https://gist.github.com/viniciusd/73e6eccd39dea5e714b1464e3c47e067

I shall rewrite it from scratch soon but keeping the output format.