T-Plan Robot Documents > T-Plan Robot Enterprise v2 Tutorial

Reports and output objects

T-Plan Robot Enterprise scripts are able to produce the following output objects:

Screen shots with optional image comparison results (through the Screenshot command),
Warnings (through the Warning command) which may be optionally associated with a screen shot,
Script mappings and step results (generated by the Script and Step commands as discussed in the previous topic; Enterprise version only),
Exit code (defined by the Exit command) where the value of 0 indicates "pass" and any other value is interpreted as "fail".

Each script is in addition able to produce an HTML or XML report (XML is supported by Enterprise version only) which summarizes the output objects, usually in the order in which they were created. Reports are generated by so called report provider. It is an object which typically attaches to the output object generators and refreshes the report file as new objects are created. This approach allows to view the report while the script is being executed and track the automation progress.

Report providers are started by the Report command which requires a mandatory target report file argument and optional provider code and report description. If the target file is relative, it gets saved to the output path (which has been described in the Predefined variables topic). If the code is not specified, it defaults to the value from the Report command preferences. Format of the report is guessed from the file extension (.html, .htm, .xml). T-Plan Robot Enterprise contains two providers:

Enterprise provider (code "enterprise", Enterprise version only) supports both XML and HTML formats. The XML document contains definitions of all output objects, environment parameters and variables. It may be used both as a report viewable in a web browser (through a linked XML Style Sheet, XSL) or as a source of test data (test results) for export to third party test management applications, for example T-Plan Professional 7.0. The XSL file may be modified to provide a custom view and plugged back into the provider through its preferences (see instructions). When the HTML format is requested, the provider initially generates the XML and then applies the XSL transformation to produce the HTML code. As this operation is costly with a large number of output objects, it is recommended either to stick to the XML format or switch to the default provider.
Default provider (code "default") is a legacy HTML-only provider shared with the open source product version. Though it provides a similar view of the data, it does not allow to customize the produced HTML code and it also can not handle script mappings and step results.

An important feature of both the providers is that they always process all output objects created by the script (or by any library it calls). It has two important impacts: First, even if you call the Report command at the end of the script, the resulting report file will contain all objects created before the call. Second, there's unfortunately no filtering mechanism allowing to select just some output objects for the report (though the XSL file could be customized to process just a subset of the XML data).

As report providers are implemented as plug ins, you are free to write your own one in Java and plug it to the tool. See the Plugin Framework document for instructions; the corresponding functional interface is ReportProvider.

The following example is a dummy and doesn't automate anything. It just generates one of each supported output objects and we will use it for report demonstration purposes:

dummy.tpr

 Script
              "1234"
             name="Dummy script"

              Screenshot
              "d.jpg"
             desc="Dummy"
template="dummy.png"

              Warning
              "Dummy
warning"

image="d.jpg"

 

             Step 
             "dummy step" 
            instruct="Dummy
instruction"

              Exit
              2

Here are reports created by all available provider and format combinations:

Provider/format	Report command	Report file example
Enterprise/XML	`Report "enterprise.xml" provider="enterprise" desc="Dummy"`	enterprise.xml
Enterprise/HTML	`Report "enterprise.html" provider="enterprise" desc="Dummy"`	enterprise.html
Default/HTML	`Report "default.html" provider="default" desc="Dummy"`	default.html

To reproduce it on your own follow these steps:

Start T-Plan Robot Enterprise and connect it to a desktop.
Copy the script code to the editor.
Add one of the Report commands (position doesn't matter).
Select Tools->Take A Screenshot in the menu and save the picture to a file called dummy.png in your home folder. It will serve as image comparison template for the Screenshot command.
Execute the script.
Right click the Report command in the editor and select "View report in web browser" in the context menu.