[SUREFIRE-2147] JUnit5 DynamicContainer/DynamicTest report loses the hierarchical structure

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 3.0.0-M7, 3.2.5
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Geoff Soutter
• Created: 27/Jan/23 07:28
• Updated: 08/Feb/24 05:18

Description

Description of the issue

I created a simple example of JUnit5 DynamicContainer/DynamicTest

package pkg;

import ...

public class JUnit5DynamicTest {

    @TestFactory
    Collection<DynamicNode> createDynamicTests() {

        List<DynamicNode> folder2 = new ArrayList<>();
        folder2.add(DynamicTest.dynamicTest("test1", new MyExecutable()));
        folder2.add(DynamicTest.dynamicTest("test2", new MyExecutable()));

        List<DynamicNode> folder1 = new ArrayList<>();
        folder1.add(DynamicContainer.dynamicContainer("folder2", folder2));

        List<DynamicNode> rootFolder = new ArrayList<>();
        rootFolder.add(DynamicContainer.dynamicContainer("folder1", folder1));
        return rootFolder;

    }

    private static class MyExecutable implements Executable {
        @Override
        public void execute() throws Throwable {
        }
    }

}

When I run this in IDEA. I get the following hierarchical structure in the UI treeview

• JUnit5DynamicTest (pkg)
  • createDynamicTests()
    • folder1
      • folder2
        • test1
        • test2

Here we can see that dynamic tests are represented by IDEA as nested children of the test method. We can open and close the "virtual packages" created as usual to explore in the dynamically created test results. It is not a "flat list".

However, things are not as good when using surefire as it still uses the years old ant XSD for XML reporting and that XSD doesn't support anything apart from basic Java usage, certainly nothing like dynamic tests which don't correspond directly to a java class and method name,

Using surefire 3.2.5 and JUnit5Xml30StatelessReporter, with the "phrased" reported configuration disabled, it creates XML report content in surefire-reports like so

  <testcase name="createDynamicTests" classname="pkg.JUnit5DynamicTest" time="0.012"/>
  <testcase name="createDynamicTests" classname="pkg.JUnit5DynamicTest" time="0.001"/>

In this case the Dynamic Tests are completely obscured, instead we get duplicate reports for the @TestFactory method.

With the example "phrased" reporter configuration "use" properties enabled, we get

  <testcase name="folder2 folder1 createDynamicTests() test1" classname="pkg.JUnit5DynamicTest" time="0.011"/>
  <testcase name="folder2 folder1 createDynamicTests() test2" classname="pkg.JUnit5DynamicTest" time="0.001"/>

Here all the Dynamic tests are created as synthetic "methods" of the physical class in the HTML report, with the DynamicContainer and DynamicTest names injected into the phrased "method" name.

From the perspective of someone with a lot of dynamic tests in a huge folder structure, this is less than ideal as the nested structure is not exposed in the test report in a clean structure way, as it was with package names.

So how do the tools that process this XML into HTML reports handle it (eg Jenkins JUnit plugin).

• should surefire uses be forced to enable phrased naming so that reporting tools can access the dynamic folder and test names?
• how can XML reporting tools show the nested structure of the DynamicFolders?
  • can XML reporting tools easily tell whether the XML was generated with phrased or non phrased settings? Should they need to?
  • if using phrased, should they parse the phrased name attribute to find the dynamic folder and test names?
  • if using non phrased, is there a way of surefire safely injecting the dynamic folder and test names into an existing attribute which will work in a backwards compatible way with the XML reporting tools?

Also the internal ordering of the phrased name attribute seems inconsistent, or at least I don't understand it. Since "test" is inside "folder1", surely "folder1" and "test" should be next to each other rather than at opposite ends of the value? If we expect ordering by heirarchy position then we would expect the folder/method names like "createDynamicTest() folder1 folder2 test1".

Solution Ideas

Perhaps one day https://github.com/ota4j-team/open-test-reporting will be supported as XML report format and at that point, I guess support for dynamic tests would be easy to add. However that could be years off, if at all.

Anyway, back to the real world, Surefire using the old ant XSD can generate two variants of the XML report, using non phrased or phrased names. Being able to control the phrased and non phrased attributes individually seems to make no sense as the attributes are related. But anyway, we have to make do.

Seems for JUnit5 XML reporting, the intention for the "name" attribute value was:

• non phrased is the TestIdentifier.legacyReportingName
• phrased is the TestIdentifier.displayName

Non Phrased

Dynamic tests with non phrased method names are currently not usable. So anything we do here would be an improvement.

The JUnit5 legacyReportingName for the example looks like "createDynamicTests[1][1][1]". However this is basically no use as it uses synthetic ids rather than the real names and will end up as a flat list without any hierarchical structure in XML reporting tools. From memory. this was actually used in earlier surefire versions, not sure what happened there, I guess the fixes for Parameterized tests broke it.

To do something which solves the hierarchical structure problem, we could instead add the dynamic names as synthetic child packages in the classname attribute.

That is, when mapping from DynamicTests to Java packages, we have:

Java Structure	Dynamic Test Structure
package identifier	DynamicContainer name
class name	static placeholder (e.g. Tests)
method name	DynamicTest name

I think we could do that by moving the method name and folder name from name= into classname= and adding a static placeholder for the classname.

  <testcase name="test1" classname="pkg.JUnit5DynamicTest.createDynamicTests().folder1.folder2.Tests"/>
  <testcase name="test2" classname="pkg.JUnit5DynamicTest.createDynamicTests().folder1.folder2.Tests"/>

Yes it is ugly, but it should allow us to view all the tests in a heirarchical structure inside existing XML reporting tools.

Phrased

For phrased usage, its less obvious what to do.

The nested structure is injected into a single XML attribute and I haven't seen any documentation of the internal structure of that attribute.

The ordering looks inconsistent as it is and possibly needs fixing. However, changing this value without any schema as to what the contents mean seems dangerous.

Casual testing with an available Jenkins instance seems to indicate that Jenkins JUnit already has some capability to parse the phrased method name as it shows folder2 as a "package" (but folder1 is lost).

To get an overall useful result here I guess we'd need to

• create and publish some kind of docs / schema on the internal structure we want to support for downstream reporting tools
• adjust whatever output we have now to meet the docs/schema, if required
• wait for downstream reporting tools to support it

Issue Links

• relates to: SUREFIRE-2144 Using JUnit4 TestSuite to create test dynamically, synthetic initializationError failure breaks Jenkins test history
• relates to: SUREFIRE-1546 JUnit 5 runner does not honor JUnit 5 display names
• relates to: SUREFIRE-2117 XML report omits package and outer class name for tests in @Nested inner class if testset reporter is configured to use phrased naming