Reporters receive test results via twelve report methods. Each report method is invoked to pass a particular kind of report to the reporter. The report methods are:

• runStarting
• testStarting
• testSucceeded
• testFailed
• testIgnored
• suiteStarting
• suiteCompleted
• suiteAborted
• infoProvided
• runStopped
• runAborted
• runCompleted

Reporters may be implemented such that they only present some of the reports to the user. For example, you could define a reporter class whose suiteStarting method does nothing. Such a class would always ignore suiteStarting reports.

The term test as used in the testStarting, testSucceeded, and testFailed method names is defined abstractly to enable a wide range of test implementations. Trait Suite invokes testStarting to indicate it is about to invoke one of its test methods, testSucceeded to indicate a test method returned normally, and testFailed to indicate a test method completed abruptly with an exception. Although the execution of a Suite's test methods will likely be a common event reported via the testStarting, testSucceeded, and testFailed methods, because of the abstract definition of “test” used by this interface, these methods are not limited to this use. Information about any conceptual test may be reported via the testStarting, testSucceeded, and testFailed methods.

Likewise, the term suite as used in the suiteStarting, suiteAborted, and suiteCompleted method names is defined abstractly to enable a wide range of suite implementations. Object Runner invokes suiteStarting to indicate it is about to invoke execute on a Suite, suiteCompleted to indicate a Suite's execute method returned normally, and suiteAborted to indicate a Suite's execute method completed abruptly with an exception. Similarly, class Suite invokes suiteStarting to indicate it is about to invoke execute on a nested Suite, suiteCompleted to indicate a nested Suite's execute method returned normally, and suiteAborted to indicate a nested Suite's execute method completed abruptly with an exception. Although the execution of a Suite's execute method will likely be a common event reported via the suiteStarting, suiteAborted, and suiteCompleted methods, because of the abstract definition of "suite" used by this interface, these methods are not limited to this use. Information about any conceptual suite may be reported via the suiteStarting, suiteAborted, and suiteCompleted methods.

Extensibility

You can create classes that extend Reporter to report test results in custom ways, and to report custom information passed to Report subclass instances. For more information on the latter use case, see the Extensibility section of the Report documentation.

Reporter classes can handle invocations of its report methods in any manner, including doing nothing. For convenience, trait Reporter includes a default implentation of each report method that does nothing.