Getting test results from Eunit in Erlang

Question

I am working with Erlang and EUnit to do unit tests, and I would like to write a test runner to automate the running of my unit tests. The problem is that eunit:test/1 seems to only return "error" or "ok" and not a list of tests and what they returned in terms of what passed or failed. So is there a way to run tests and get back some form of a data structure of what tests ran and their pass/fail state?

Accepted Answer

If you are using rebar you don't have to implement your own runner. You can simply run:

```
rebar eunit
```

Rebar will compile and run all tests in the `test` directory (as well as eunit tests inside your modules). Furthermore, rebar allows you set the same options in the `rebar.config` as in the shell:

```
{eunit_opts, [verbose, {report,{eunit_surefire,[{dir,"."}]}}]}.
```

You can use these options also in the shell:

```
> eunit:test([foo], [verbose, {report,{eunit_surefire,[{dir,"."}]}}]).
```

See also documentation for verbose option and structured report.

An alternative option would be to use Common Test instead of Eunit. Common Test comes with a runner (`ct_run` command) and gives you more flexibility in your test setup but is also a little more complex to use. Common Test lacks on the available macros but produces very comprehensible html reports.

Getting test results from Eunit in Erlang

Solution

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