Now that you have read the googletest Primer and learned how to write tests using googletest, it's time to learn some new tricks. This document will show you more assertions as well as how to construct complex failure messages, propagate fatal failures, reuse and speed up your test fixtures, and use various flags with your tests.
This section covers some less frequently used, but still significant, assertions.
These three assertions do not actually test a value or expression. Instead, they generate a success or failure directly. Like the macros that actually perform a test, you may stream a custom failure message into them.
SUCCEED();
Generates a success. This does NOT make the overall test succeed. A test is considered successful only if none of its assertions fail during its execution.
NOTE: SUCCEED()
is purely documentary and currently doesn't generate any
user-visible output. However, we may add SUCCEED()
messages to googletest's
output in the future.
FAIL();
ADD_FAILURE();
ADD_FAILURE_AT("file_path", line_number);
FAIL()
generates a fatal failure, while ADD_FAILURE()
and ADD_FAILURE_AT()
generate a nonfatal failure. These are useful when control flow, rather than a
Boolean expression, determines the test's success or failure. For example, you
might want to write something like:
switch(expression) {
case 1:
... some checks ...
case 2:
... some other checks ...
default:
FAIL() << "We shouldn't get here.";
}
NOTE: you can only use FAIL()
in functions that return void
. See the
Assertion Placement section for more information.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
These are for verifying that a piece of code throws (or does not throw) an exception of the given type:
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_THROW(statement, exception_type); |
EXPECT_THROW(statement, exception_type); |
statement throws an exception of the given type |
ASSERT_ANY_THROW(statement); |
EXPECT_ANY_THROW(statement); |
statement throws an exception of any type |
ASSERT_NO_THROW(statement); |
EXPECT_NO_THROW(statement); |
statement doesn't throw any exception |
Examples:
ASSERT_THROW(Foo(5), bar_exception);
EXPECT_NO_THROW({
int n = 5;
Bar(&n);
});
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac; requires exceptions to be enabled in the
build environment (note that google3
disables exceptions).
Even though googletest has a rich set of assertions, they can never be complete,
as it's impossible (nor a good idea) to anticipate all scenarios a user might
run into. Therefore, sometimes a user has to use EXPECT_TRUE()
to check a
complex expression, for lack of a better macro. This has the problem of not
showing you the values of the parts of the expression, making it hard to
understand what went wrong. As a workaround, some users choose to construct the
failure message by themselves, streaming it into EXPECT_TRUE()
. However, this
is awkward especially when the expression has side-effects or is expensive to
evaluate.
googletest gives you three different options to solve this problem:
If you already have a function or functor that returns bool
(or a type that
can be implicitly converted to bool
), you can use it in a predicate
assertion to get the function arguments printed for free:
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_PRED1(pred1, val1); |
EXPECT_PRED1(pred1, val1); |
pred1(val1) is true |
ASSERT_PRED2(pred2, val1, val2); |
EXPECT_PRED2(pred2, val1, val2); |
pred2(val1, val2) is true |
... |
... |
... |
In the above, predn
is an n
-ary predicate function or functor, where val1
,
val2
, ..., and valn
are its arguments. The assertion succeeds if the
predicate returns true
when applied to the given arguments, and fails
otherwise. When the assertion fails, it prints the value of each argument. In
either case, the arguments are evaluated exactly once.
Here's an example. Given
// Returns true if m and n have no common divisors except 1.
bool MutuallyPrime(int m, int n) { ... }
const int a = 3;
const int b = 4;
const int c = 10;
the assertion
EXPECT_PRED2(MutuallyPrime, a, b);
will succeed, while the assertion
EXPECT_PRED2(MutuallyPrime, b, c);
will fail with the message
MutuallyPrime(b, c) is false, where
b is 4
c is 10
NOTE:
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
While EXPECT_PRED*()
and friends are handy for a quick job, the syntax is not
satisfactory: you have to use different macros for different arities, and it
feels more like Lisp than C++. The ::testing::AssertionResult
class solves
this problem.
An AssertionResult
object represents the result of an assertion (whether it's
a success or a failure, and an associated message). You can create an
AssertionResult
using one of these factory functions:
namespace testing {
// Returns an AssertionResult object to indicate that an assertion has
// succeeded.
AssertionResult AssertionSuccess();
// Returns an AssertionResult object to indicate that an assertion has
// failed.
AssertionResult AssertionFailure();
}
You can then use the <<
operator to stream messages to the AssertionResult
object.
To provide more readable messages in Boolean assertions (e.g. EXPECT_TRUE()
),
write a predicate function that returns AssertionResult
instead of bool
. For
example, if you define IsEven()
as:
::testing::AssertionResult IsEven(int n) {
if ((n % 2) == 0)
return ::testing::AssertionSuccess();
else
return ::testing::AssertionFailure() << n << " is odd";
}
instead of:
bool IsEven(int n) {
return (n % 2) == 0;
}
the failed assertion EXPECT_TRUE(IsEven(Fib(4)))
will print:
Value of: IsEven(Fib(4))
Actual: false (3 is odd)
Expected: true
instead of a more opaque
Value of: IsEven(Fib(4))
Actual: false
Expected: true
If you want informative messages in EXPECT_FALSE
and ASSERT_FALSE
as well
(one third of Boolean assertions in the Google code base are negative ones), and
are fine with making the predicate slower in the success case, you can supply a
success message:
::testing::AssertionResult IsEven(int n) {
if ((n % 2) == 0)
return ::testing::AssertionSuccess() << n << " is even";
else
return ::testing::AssertionFailure() << n << " is odd";
}
Then the statement EXPECT_FALSE(IsEven(Fib(6)))
will print
Value of: IsEven(Fib(6))
Actual: true (8 is even)
Expected: false
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
If you find the default message generated by (ASSERT|EXPECT)_PRED*
and
(ASSERT|EXPECT)_(TRUE|FALSE)
unsatisfactory, or some arguments to your
predicate do not support streaming to ostream
, you can instead use the
following predicate-formatter assertions to fully customize how the message
is formatted:
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_PRED_FORMAT1(pred_format1, val1); |
EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT1(pred_format1, val1); |
pred_format1(val1) is successful |
ASSERT_PRED_FORMAT2(pred_format2, val1, val2); |
EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT2(pred_format2, val1, val2); |
pred_format2(val1, val2) is successful |
... |
... |
... |
The difference between this and the previous group of macros is that instead of
a predicate, (ASSERT|EXPECT)_PRED_FORMAT*
take a predicate-formatter
(pred_formatn
), which is a function or functor with the signature:
::testing::AssertionResult PredicateFormattern(const char* expr1,
const char* expr2,
...
const char* exprn,
T1 val1,
T2 val2,
...
Tn valn);
where val1
, val2
, ..., and valn
are the values of the predicate arguments,
and expr1
, expr2
, ..., and exprn
are the corresponding expressions as they
appear in the source code. The types T1
, T2
, ..., and Tn
can be either
value types or reference types. For example, if an argument has type Foo
, you
can declare it as either Foo
or const Foo&
, whichever is appropriate.
As an example, let's improve the failure message in MutuallyPrime()
, which was
used with EXPECT_PRED2()
:
// Returns the smallest prime common divisor of m and n,
// or 1 when m and n are mutually prime.
int SmallestPrimeCommonDivisor(int m, int n) { ... }
// A predicate-formatter for asserting that two integers are mutually prime.
::testing::AssertionResult AssertMutuallyPrime(const char* m_expr,
const char* n_expr,
int m,
int n) {
if (MutuallyPrime(m, n)) return ::testing::AssertionSuccess();
return ::testing::AssertionFailure() << m_expr << " and " << n_expr
<< " (" << m << " and " << n << ") are not mutually prime, "
<< "as they have a common divisor " << SmallestPrimeCommonDivisor(m, n);
}
With this predicate-formatter, we can use
EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT2(AssertMutuallyPrime, b, c);
to generate the message
b and c (4 and 10) are not mutually prime, as they have a common divisor 2.
As you may have realized, many of the built-in assertions we introduced earlier
are special cases of (EXPECT|ASSERT)_PRED_FORMAT*
. In fact, most of them are
indeed defined using (EXPECT|ASSERT)_PRED_FORMAT*
.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
Comparing floating-point numbers is tricky. Due to round-off errors, it is very
unlikely that two floating-points will match exactly. Therefore, ASSERT_EQ
's
naive comparison usually doesn't work. And since floating-points can have a wide
value range, no single fixed error bound works. It's better to compare by a
fixed relative error bound, except for values close to 0 due to the loss of
precision there.
In general, for floating-point comparison to make sense, the user needs to carefully choose the error bound. If they don't want or care to, comparing in terms of Units in the Last Place (ULPs) is a good default, and googletest provides assertions to do this. Full details about ULPs are quite long; if you want to learn more, see here.
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_FLOAT_EQ(val1, val2); |
EXPECT_FLOAT_EQ(val1,val2); |
the two float values are almost equal |
ASSERT_DOUBLE_EQ(val1, val2); |
EXPECT_DOUBLE_EQ(val1, val2); |
the two double values are almost equal |
By "almost equal" we mean the values are within 4 ULP's from each other.
NOTE: CHECK_DOUBLE_EQ()
in base/logging.h
uses a fixed absolute error bound,
so its result may differ from that of the googletest macros. That macro is
unsafe and has been deprecated. Please don't use it any more.
The following assertions allow you to choose the acceptable error bound:
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_NEAR(val1, val2, abs_error); |
EXPECT_NEAR(val1, val2, abs_error); |
the difference between val1 and val2 doesn't exceed the given absolute error |
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
Some floating-point operations are useful, but not that often used. In order to
avoid an explosion of new macros, we provide them as predicate-format functions
that can be used in predicate assertion macros (e.g. EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT2
,
etc).
EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT2(::testing::FloatLE, val1, val2);
EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT2(::testing::DoubleLE, val1, val2);
Verifies that val1
is less than, or almost equal to, val2
. You can replace
EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT2
in the above table with ASSERT_PRED_FORMAT2
.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
Google-developed C++ mocking framework gMock comes with a library of matchers for validating arguments passed to mock objects. A gMock matcher is basically a predicate that knows how to describe itself. It can be used in these assertion macros:
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_THAT(value, matcher); |
EXPECT_THAT(value, matcher); |
value matches matcher |
For example, StartsWith(prefix)
is a matcher that matches a string starting
with prefix
, and you can write:
using ::testing::StartsWith;
...
// Verifies that Foo() returns a string starting with "Hello".
EXPECT_THAT(Foo(), StartsWith("Hello"));
Read this recipe in the gMock Cookbook for more details.
gMock has a rich set of matchers. You can do many things googletest cannot do alone with them. For a list of matchers gMock provides, read this. Especially useful among them are some protocol buffer matchers. It's easy to write your own matchers too.
For example, you can use gMock's EqualsProto to compare protos in your tests:
#include "testing/base/public/gmock.h"
using ::testing::EqualsProto;
...
EXPECT_THAT(actual_proto, EqualsProto("foo: 123 bar: 'xyz'"));
EXPECT_THAT(*actual_proto_ptr, EqualsProto(expected_proto));
gMock is bundled with googletest, so you don't need to add any build dependency
in order to take advantage of this. Just include "testing/base/public/gmock.h"
and you're ready to go.
Availability: Linux, Windows, and Mac.
(Please read the previous section first if you haven't.)
You can use the gMock string matchers
with EXPECT_THAT()
or ASSERT_THAT()
to do more string comparison tricks
(sub-string, prefix, suffix, regular expression, and etc). For example,
using ::testing::HasSubstr;
using ::testing::MatchesRegex;
...
ASSERT_THAT(foo_string, HasSubstr("needle"));
EXPECT_THAT(bar_string, MatchesRegex("\\w*\\d+"));
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
If the string contains a well-formed HTML or XML document, you can check whether its DOM tree matches an XPath expression:
// Currently still in //template/prototemplate/testing:xpath_matcher
#include "template/prototemplate/testing/xpath_matcher.h"
using prototemplate::testing::MatchesXPath;
EXPECT_THAT(html_string, MatchesXPath("//a[text()='click here']"));
Availability: Linux.
These assertions test for HRESULT
success or failure.
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_HRESULT_SUCCEEDED(expression) |
EXPECT_HRESULT_SUCCEEDED(expression) |
expression is a success HRESULT |
ASSERT_HRESULT_FAILED(expression) |
EXPECT_HRESULT_FAILED(expression) |
expression is a failure HRESULT |
The generated output contains the human-readable error message associated with
the HRESULT
code returned by expression
.
You might use them like this:
CComPtr<IShellDispatch2> shell;
ASSERT_HRESULT_SUCCEEDED(shell.CoCreateInstance(L"Shell.Application"));
CComVariant empty;
ASSERT_HRESULT_SUCCEEDED(shell->ShellExecute(CComBSTR(url), empty, empty, empty, empty));
Availability: Windows.
You can call the function
::testing::StaticAssertTypeEq<T1, T2>();
to assert that types T1
and T2
are the same. The function does nothing if
the assertion is satisfied. If the types are different, the function call will
fail to compile, and the compiler error message will likely (depending on the
compiler) show you the actual values of T1
and T2
. This is mainly useful
inside template code.
Caveat: When used inside a member function of a class template or a function
template, StaticAssertTypeEq<T1, T2>()
is effective only if the function is
instantiated. For example, given:
template <typename T> class Foo {
public:
void Bar() { ::testing::StaticAssertTypeEq<int, T>(); }
};
the code:
void Test1() { Foo<bool> foo; }
will not generate a compiler error, as Foo<bool>::Bar()
is never actually
instantiated. Instead, you need:
void Test2() { Foo<bool> foo; foo.Bar(); }
to cause a compiler error.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
You can use assertions in any C++ function. In particular, it doesn't have to be
a method of the test fixture class. The one constraint is that assertions that
generate a fatal failure (FAIL*
and ASSERT_*
) can only be used in
void-returning functions. This is a consequence of Google's not using
exceptions. By placing it in a non-void function you'll get a confusing compile
error like "error: void value not ignored as it ought to be"
or "cannot
initialize return object of type 'bool' with an rvalue of type 'void'"
or
"error: no viable conversion from 'void' to 'string'"
.
If you need to use fatal assertions in a function that returns non-void, one
option is to make the function return the value in an out parameter instead. For
example, you can rewrite T2 Foo(T1 x)
to void Foo(T1 x, T2* result)
. You
need to make sure that *result
contains some sensible value even when the
function returns prematurely. As the function now returns void
, you can use
any assertion inside of it.
If changing the function's type is not an option, you should just use assertions
that generate non-fatal failures, such as ADD_FAILURE*
and EXPECT_*
.
NOTE: Constructors and destructors are not considered void-returning functions, according to the C++ language specification, and so you may not use fatal assertions in them. You'll get a compilation error if you try. A simple workaround is to transfer the entire body of the constructor or destructor to a private void-returning method. However, you should be aware that a fatal assertion failure in a constructor does not terminate the current test, as your intuition might suggest; it merely returns from the constructor early, possibly leaving your object in a partially-constructed state. Likewise, a fatal assertion failure in a destructor may leave your object in a partially-destructed state. Use assertions carefully in these situations!
When a test assertion such as EXPECT_EQ
fails, googletest prints the argument
values to help you debug. It does this using a user-extensible value printer.
This printer knows how to print built-in C++ types, native arrays, STL
containers, and any type that supports the <<
operator. For other types, it
prints the raw bytes in the value and hopes that you the user can figure it out.
As mentioned earlier, the printer is extensible. That means you can teach it
to do a better job at printing your particular type than to dump the bytes. To
do that, define <<
for your type:
// Streams are allowed only for logging. Don't include this for
// any other purpose.
#include <ostream>
namespace foo {
class Bar { // We want googletest to be able to print instances of this.
...
// Create a free inline friend function.
friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const Bar& bar) {
return os << bar.DebugString(); // whatever needed to print bar to os
}
};
// If you can't declare the function in the class it's important that the
// << operator is defined in the SAME namespace that defines Bar. C++'s look-up
// rules rely on that.
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const Bar& bar) {
return os << bar.DebugString(); // whatever needed to print bar to os
}
} // namespace foo
Sometimes, this might not be an option: your team may consider it bad style to
have a <<
operator for Bar
, or Bar
may already have a <<
operator that
doesn't do what you want (and you cannot change it). If so, you can instead
define a PrintTo()
function like this:
// Streams are allowed only for logging. Don't include this for
// any other purpose.
#include <ostream>
namespace foo {
class Bar {
...
friend void PrintTo(const Bar& bar, std::ostream* os) {
*os << bar.DebugString(); // whatever needed to print bar to os
}
};
// If you can't declare the function in the class it's important that PrintTo()
// is defined in the SAME namespace that defines Bar. C++'s look-up rules rely
// on that.
void PrintTo(const Bar& bar, std::ostream* os) {
*os << bar.DebugString(); // whatever needed to print bar to os
}
} // namespace foo
If you have defined both <<
and PrintTo()
, the latter will be used when
googletest is concerned. This allows you to customize how the value appears in
googletest's output without affecting code that relies on the behavior of its
<<
operator.
If you want to print a value x
using googletest's value printer yourself, just
call ::testing::PrintToString(x)
, which returns an std::string
:
vector<pair<Bar, int> > bar_ints = GetBarIntVector();
EXPECT_TRUE(IsCorrectBarIntVector(bar_ints))
<< "bar_ints = " << ::testing::PrintToString(bar_ints);
In many applications, there are assertions that can cause application failure if a condition is not met. These sanity checks, which ensure that the program is in a known good state, are there to fail at the earliest possible time after some program state is corrupted. If the assertion checks the wrong condition, then the program may proceed in an erroneous state, which could lead to memory corruption, security holes, or worse. Hence it is vitally important to test that such assertion statements work as expected.
Since these precondition checks cause the processes to die, we call such tests death tests. More generally, any test that checks that a program terminates (except by throwing an exception) in an expected fashion is also a death test.
Note that if a piece of code throws an exception, we don't consider it "death" for the purpose of death tests, as the caller of the code could catch the exception and avoid the crash. If you want to verify exceptions thrown by your code, see Exception Assertions.
If you want to test EXPECT_*()/ASSERT_*()
failures in your test code, see
Catching Failures
googletest has the following macros to support death tests:
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_DEATH(statement, regex); |
EXPECT_DEATH(statement, regex); |
statement crashes with the given error |
ASSERT_DEATH_IF_SUPPORTED(statement, regex); |
EXPECT_DEATH_IF_SUPPORTED(statement, regex); |
if death tests are supported, verifies that statement crashes with the given error; otherwise verifies nothing |
ASSERT_EXIT(statement, predicate, regex); |
EXPECT_EXIT(statement, predicate, regex); |
statement exits with the given error, and its exit code matches predicate |
where statement
is a statement that is expected to cause the process to die,
predicate
is a function or function object that evaluates an integer exit
status, and regex
is a (Perl) regular expression that the stderr output of
statement
is expected to match. Note that statement
can be any valid
statement (including compound statement) and doesn't have to be an
expression.
As usual, the ASSERT
variants abort the current test function, while the
EXPECT
variants do not.
NOTE: We use the word "crash" here to mean that the process terminates with a non-zero exit status code. There are two possibilities: either the process has called
exit()
or_exit()
with a non-zero value, or it may be killed by a signal.This means that if
*statement*
terminates the process with a 0 exit code, it is not considered a crash byEXPECT_DEATH
. UseEXPECT_EXIT
instead if this is the case, or if you want to restrict the exit code more precisely.
A predicate here must accept an int
and return a bool
. The death test
succeeds only if the predicate returns true
. googletest defines a few
predicates that handle the most common cases:
::testing::ExitedWithCode(exit_code)
This expression is true
if the program exited normally with the given exit
code.
::testing::KilledBySignal(signal_number) // Not available on Windows.
This expression is true
if the program was killed by the given signal.
The *_DEATH
macros are convenient wrappers for *_EXIT
that use a predicate
that verifies the process' exit code is non-zero.
Note that a death test only cares about three things:
statement
abort or exit the process?ASSERT_EXIT
and EXPECT_EXIT
) does the exit status
satisfy predicate
? Or (in the case of ASSERT_DEATH
and EXPECT_DEATH
)
is the exit status non-zero? Andregex
?In particular, if statement
generates an ASSERT_*
or EXPECT_*
failure, it
will not cause the death test to fail, as googletest assertions don't abort
the process.
To write a death test, simply use one of the above macros inside your test function. For example,
TEST(MyDeathTest, Foo) {
// This death test uses a compound statement.
ASSERT_DEATH({
int n = 5;
Foo(&n);
}, "Error on line .* of Foo()");
}
TEST(MyDeathTest, NormalExit) {
EXPECT_EXIT(NormalExit(), ::testing::ExitedWithCode(0), "Success");
}
TEST(MyDeathTest, KillMyself) {
EXPECT_EXIT(KillMyself(), ::testing::KilledBySignal(SIGKILL),
"Sending myself unblockable signal");
}
verifies that:
Foo(5)
causes the process to die with the given error message,NormalExit()
causes the process to print "Success"
to stderr and
exit with exit code 0, andKillMyself()
kills the process with signal SIGKILL
.The test function body may contain other assertions and statements as well, if necessary.
IMPORTANT: We strongly recommend you to follow the convention of naming your
test case (not test) *DeathTest
when it contains a death test, as
demonstrated in the above example. The Death Tests And
Threads section below explains why.
If a test fixture class is shared by normal tests and death tests, you can use
using
or typedef
to introduce an alias for the fixture class and avoid
duplicating its code:
class FooTest : public ::testing::Test { ... };
using FooDeathTest = FooTest;
TEST_F(FooTest, DoesThis) {
// normal test
}
TEST_F(FooDeathTest, DoesThat) {
// death test
}
Availability: Linux, Windows (requires MSVC 8.0 or above), Cygwin, and Mac
On POSIX systems (e.g. Linux, Cygwin, and Mac), googletest uses the POSIX extended regular expression syntax. To learn about this syntax, you may want to read this Wikipedia entry.
On Windows, googletest uses its own simple regular expression implementation. It
lacks many features. For example, we don't support union ("x|y"
), grouping
("(xy)"
), brackets ("[xy]"
), and repetition count ("x{5,7}"
), among
others. Below is what we do support (A
denotes a literal character, period
(.
), or a single \\
escape sequence; x
and y
denote regular
expressions.):
Expression | Meaning |
---|---|
c |
matches any literal character c |
\\d |
matches any decimal digit |
\\D |
matches any character that's not a decimal digit |
\\f |
matches \f |
\\n |
matches \n |
\\r |
matches \r |
\\s |
matches any ASCII whitespace, including \n |
\\S |
matches any character that's not a whitespace |
\\t |
matches \t |
\\v |
matches \v |
\\w |
matches any letter, _ , or decimal digit |
\\W |
matches any character that \\w doesn't match |
\\c |
matches any literal character c , which must be a punctuation |
. |
matches any single character except \n |
A? |
matches 0 or 1 occurrences of A |
A* |
matches 0 or many occurrences of A |
A+ |
matches 1 or many occurrences of A |
^ |
matches the beginning of a string (not that of each line) |
$ |
matches the end of a string (not that of each line) |
xy |
matches x followed by y |
To help you determine which capability is available on your system, googletest
defines macros to govern which regular expression it is using. The macros are:
GTEST_USES_PCRE=1
, or
GTEST_USES_SIMPLE_RE=1
or GTEST_USES_POSIX_RE=1
. If
you want your death tests to work in all cases, you can either #if
on these
macros or use the more limited syntax only.
Under the hood, ASSERT_EXIT()
spawns a new process and executes the death test
statement in that process. The details of how precisely that happens depend on
the platform and the variable ::testing::GTEST_FLAG(death_test_style) (which is
initialized from the command-line flag --gtest_death_test_style
).
fork()
(or clone()
on Linux) is used to spawn the
child, after which:
"fast"
, the death test statement is
immediately executed."threadsafe"
, the child process re-executes
the unit test binary just as it was originally invoked, but with some
extra flags to cause just the single death test under consideration to
be run.CreateProcess()
API, and
re-executes the binary to cause just the single death test under
consideration to be run - much like the threadsafe
mode on POSIX.Other values for the variable are illegal and will cause the death test to fail. Currently, the flag's default value is "fast". However, we reserve the right to change it in the future. Therefore, your tests should not depend on this. In either case, the parent process waits for the child process to complete, and checks that
If the death test statement runs to completion without dying, the child process will nonetheless terminate, and the assertion fails.
The reason for the two death test styles has to do with thread safety. Due to well-known problems with forking in the presence of threads, death tests should be run in a single-threaded context. Sometimes, however, it isn't feasible to arrange that kind of environment. For example, statically-initialized modules may start threads before main is ever reached. Once threads have been created, it may be difficult or impossible to clean them up.
googletest has three features intended to raise awareness of threading issues.
clone()
instead of fork()
to spawn the child process on Linux
(clone()
is not available on Cygwin and Mac), as fork()
is more likely
to cause the child to hang when the parent process has multiple threads.It's perfectly fine to create threads inside a death test statement; they are executed in a separate process and cannot affect the parent.
The "threadsafe" death test style was introduced in order to help mitigate the risks of testing in a possibly multithreaded environment. It trades increased test execution time (potentially dramatically so) for improved thread safety.
The automated testing framework does not set the style flag. You can choose a particular style of death tests by setting the flag programmatically:
testing::FLAGS_gtest_death_test_style="threadsafe"
You can do this in main()
to set the style for all death tests in the binary,
or in individual tests. Recall that flags are saved before running each test and
restored afterwards, so you need not do that yourself. For example:
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
InitGoogle(argv[0], &argc, &argv, true);
::testing::FLAGS_gtest_death_test_style = "fast";
return RUN_ALL_TESTS();
}
TEST(MyDeathTest, TestOne) {
::testing::FLAGS_gtest_death_test_style = "threadsafe";
// This test is run in the "threadsafe" style:
ASSERT_DEATH(ThisShouldDie(), "");
}
TEST(MyDeathTest, TestTwo) {
// This test is run in the "fast" style:
ASSERT_DEATH(ThisShouldDie(), "");
}
The statement
argument of ASSERT_EXIT()
can be any valid C++ statement. If
it leaves the current function via a return
statement or by throwing an
exception, the death test is considered to have failed. Some googletest macros
may return from the current function (e.g. ASSERT_TRUE()
), so be sure to avoid
them in statement
.
Since statement
runs in the child process, any in-memory side effect (e.g.
modifying a variable, releasing memory, etc) it causes will not be observable
in the parent process. In particular, if you release memory in a death test,
your program will fail the heap check as the parent process will never see the
memory reclaimed. To solve this problem, you can
Due to an implementation detail, you cannot place multiple death test assertions on the same line; otherwise, compilation will fail with an unobvious error message.
Despite the improved thread safety afforded by the "threadsafe" style of death
test, thread problems such as deadlock are still possible in the presence of
handlers registered with pthread_atfork(3)
.
If a test sub-routine is called from several places, when an assertion inside it
fails, it can be hard to tell which invocation of the sub-routine the failure is
from.
You can alleviate this problem using extra logging or custom failure messages,
but that usually clutters up your tests. A better solution is to use the
SCOPED_TRACE
macro or the ScopedTrace
utility:
SCOPED_TRACE(message);
ScopedTrace trace("file_path", line_number, message);
where message
can be anything streamable to std::ostream
. SCOPED_TRACE
macro will cause the current file name, line number, and the given message to be
added in every failure message. ScopedTrace
accepts explicit file name and
line number in arguments, which is useful for writing test helpers. The effect
will be undone when the control leaves the current lexical scope.
For example,
10: void Sub1(int n) {
11: EXPECT_EQ(1, Bar(n));
12: EXPECT_EQ(2, Bar(n + 1));
13: }
14:
15: TEST(FooTest, Bar) {
16: {
17: SCOPED_TRACE("A"); // This trace point will be included in
18: // every failure in this scope.
19: Sub1(1);
20: }
21: // Now it won't.
22: Sub1(9);
23: }
could result in messages like these:
path/to/foo_test.cc:11: Failure
Value of: Bar(n)
Expected: 1
Actual: 2
Trace:
path/to/foo_test.cc:17: A
path/to/foo_test.cc:12: Failure
Value of: Bar(n + 1)
Expected: 2
Actual: 3
Without the trace, it would've been difficult to know which invocation of
Sub1()
the two failures come from respectively. (You could add
an extra message to each assertion in Sub1()
to indicate the value of n
, but
that's tedious.)
Some tips on using SCOPED_TRACE
:
SCOPED_TRACE
at the
beginning of a sub-routine, instead of at each call site.SCOPED_TRACE
such that you can know which iteration the failure
is from.SCOPED_TRACE
. You can simply use ""
.SCOPED_TRACE
in an inner scope when there is one in the outer
scope. In this case, all active trace points will be included in the failure
messages, in reverse order they are encountered.return
on a line number and
you'll be taken to that line in the source file!Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
A common pitfall when using ASSERT_*
and FAIL*
is not understanding that
when they fail they only abort the current function, not the entire test. For
example, the following test will segfault:
void Subroutine() {
// Generates a fatal failure and aborts the current function.
ASSERT_EQ(1, 2);
// The following won't be executed.
...
}
TEST(FooTest, Bar) {
Subroutine(); // The intended behavior is for the fatal failure
// in Subroutine() to abort the entire test.
// The actual behavior: the function goes on after Subroutine() returns.
int* p = NULL;
*p = 3; // Segfault!
}
To alleviate this, googletest provides three different solutions. You could use
either exceptions, the (ASSERT|EXPECT)_NO_FATAL_FAILURE
assertions or the
HasFatalFailure()
function. They are described in the following two
subsections.
The following code can turn ASSERT-failure into an exception:
class ThrowListener : public testing::EmptyTestEventListener {
void OnTestPartResult(const testing::TestPartResult& result) override {
if (result.type() == testing::TestPartResult::kFatalFailure) {
throw testing::AssertionException(result);
}
}
};
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
...
testing::UnitTest::GetInstance()->listeners().Append(new ThrowListener);
return RUN_ALL_TESTS();
}
This listener should be added after other listeners if you have any, otherwise
they won't see failed OnTestPartResult
.
As shown above, if your test calls a subroutine that has an ASSERT_*
failure
in it, the test will continue after the subroutine returns. This may not be what
you want.
Often people want fatal failures to propagate like exceptions. For that googletest offers the following macros:
Fatal assertion | Nonfatal assertion | Verifies |
---|---|---|
ASSERT_NO_FATAL_FAILURE(statement); |
EXPECT_NO_FATAL_FAILURE(statement); |
statement doesn't generate any new fatal failures in the current thread. |
Only failures in the thread that executes the assertion are checked to determine
the result of this type of assertions. If statement
creates new threads,
failures in these threads are ignored.
Examples:
ASSERT_NO_FATAL_FAILURE(Foo());
int i;
EXPECT_NO_FATAL_FAILURE({
i = Bar();
});
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac. Assertions from multiple threads are currently not supported on Windows.
HasFatalFailure()
in the ::testing::Test
class returns true
if an
assertion in the current test has suffered a fatal failure. This allows
functions to catch fatal failures in a sub-routine and return early.
class Test {
public:
...
static bool HasFatalFailure();
};
The typical usage, which basically simulates the behavior of a thrown exception, is:
TEST(FooTest, Bar) {
Subroutine();
// Aborts if Subroutine() had a fatal failure.
if (HasFatalFailure()) return;
// The following won't be executed.
...
}
If HasFatalFailure()
is used outside of TEST()
, TEST_F()
, or a test
fixture, you must add the ::testing::Test::
prefix, as in:
if (::testing::Test::HasFatalFailure()) return;
Similarly, HasNonfatalFailure()
returns true
if the current test has at
least one non-fatal failure, and HasFailure()
returns true
if the current
test has at least one failure of either kind.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
In your test code, you can call RecordProperty("key", value)
to log additional
information, where value
can be either a string or an int
. The last value
recorded for a key will be emitted to the XML output if you
specify one. For example, the test
TEST_F(WidgetUsageTest, MinAndMaxWidgets) {
RecordProperty("MaximumWidgets", ComputeMaxUsage());
RecordProperty("MinimumWidgets", ComputeMinUsage());
}
will output XML like this:
...
<testcase name="MinAndMaxWidgets" status="run" time="0.006" classname="WidgetUsageTest" MaximumWidgets="12" MinimumWidgets="9" />
...
NOTE:
RecordProperty()
is a static member of theTest
class. Therefore it needs to be prefixed with::testing::Test::
if used outside of theTEST
body and the test fixture class.*key*
must be a valid XML attribute name, and cannot conflict with the ones already used by googletest (name
,status
,time
,classname
,type_param
, andvalue_param
).- Calling
RecordProperty()
outside of the lifespan of a test is allowed. If it's called outside of a test but between a test case'sSetUpTestCase()
andTearDownTestCase()
methods, it will be attributed to the XML element for the test case. If it's called outside of all test cases (e.g. in a test environment), it will be attributed to the top-level XML element.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
googletest creates a new test fixture object for each test in order to make tests independent and easier to debug. However, sometimes tests use resources that are expensive to set up, making the one-copy-per-test model prohibitively expensive.
If the tests don't change the resource, there's no harm in their sharing a single resource copy. So, in addition to per-test set-up/tear-down, googletest also supports per-test-case set-up/tear-down. To use it:
FooTest
), declare as static
some member
variables to hold the shared resources.static void SetUpTestCase()
function (remember not to spell it as SetupTestCase
with a small u
!)
to set up the shared resources and a static void TearDownTestCase()
function to tear them down.That's it! googletest automatically calls SetUpTestCase()
before running the
first test in the FooTest
test case (i.e. before creating the first
FooTest
object), and calls TearDownTestCase()
after running the last test
in it (i.e. after deleting the last FooTest
object). In between, the tests can
use the shared resources.
Remember that the test order is undefined, so your code can't depend on a test preceding or following another. Also, the tests must either not modify the state of any shared resource, or, if they do modify the state, they must restore the state to its original value before passing control to the next test.
Here's an example of per-test-case set-up and tear-down:
class FooTest : public ::testing::Test {
protected:
// Per-test-case set-up.
// Called before the first test in this test case.
// Can be omitted if not needed.
static void SetUpTestCase() {
shared_resource_ = new ...;
}
// Per-test-case tear-down.
// Called after the last test in this test case.
// Can be omitted if not needed.
static void TearDownTestCase() {
delete shared_resource_;
shared_resource_ = NULL;
}
// You can define per-test set-up logic as usual.
virtual void SetUp() { ... }
// You can define per-test tear-down logic as usual.
virtual void TearDown() { ... }
// Some expensive resource shared by all tests.
static T* shared_resource_;
};
T* FooTest::shared_resource_ = NULL;
TEST_F(FooTest, Test1) {
... you can refer to shared_resource_ here ...
}
TEST_F(FooTest, Test2) {
... you can refer to shared_resource_ here ...
}
NOTE: Though the above code declares SetUpTestCase()
protected, it may
sometimes be necessary to declare it public, such as when using it with
TEST_P
.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
Just as you can do set-up and tear-down at the test level and the test case level, you can also do it at the test program level. Here's how.
First, you subclass the ::testing::Environment
class to define a test
environment, which knows how to set-up and tear-down:
class Environment {
public:
virtual ~Environment() {}
// Override this to define how to set up the environment.
virtual void SetUp() {}
// Override this to define how to tear down the environment.
virtual void TearDown() {}
};
Then, you register an instance of your environment class with googletest by
calling the ::testing::AddGlobalTestEnvironment()
function:
Environment* AddGlobalTestEnvironment(Environment* env);
Now, when RUN_ALL_TESTS()
is called, it first calls the SetUp()
method of
the environment object, then runs the tests if there was no fatal failures, and
finally calls TearDown()
of the environment object.
It's OK to register multiple environment objects. In this case, their SetUp()
will be called in the order they are registered, and their TearDown()
will be
called in the reverse order.
Note that googletest takes ownership of the registered environment objects. Therefore do not delete them by yourself.
You should call AddGlobalTestEnvironment()
before RUN_ALL_TESTS()
is called,
probably in main()
. If you use gtest_main
, you need to call this before
main()
starts for it to take effect. One way to do this is to define a global
variable like this:
::testing::Environment* const foo_env =
::testing::AddGlobalTestEnvironment(new FooEnvironment);
However, we strongly recommend you to write your own main()
and call
AddGlobalTestEnvironment()
there, as relying on initialization of global
variables makes the code harder to read and may cause problems when you register
multiple environments from different translation units and the environments have
dependencies among them (remember that the compiler doesn't guarantee the order
in which global variables from different translation units are initialized).
Value-parameterized tests allow you to test your code with different parameters without writing multiple copies of the same test. This is useful in a number of situations, for example:
To write value-parameterized tests, first you should define a fixture class. It
must be derived from both ::testing::Test
and
::testing::WithParamInterface<T>
(the latter is a pure interface), where T
is the type of your parameter values. For convenience, you can just derive the
fixture class from ::testing::TestWithParam<T>
, which itself is derived from
both ::testing::Test
and ::testing::WithParamInterface<T>
. T
can be any
copyable type. If it's a raw pointer, you are responsible for managing the
lifespan of the pointed values.
NOTE: If your test fixture defines SetUpTestCase()
or TearDownTestCase()
they must be declared public rather than protected in order to use
TEST_P
.
class FooTest :
public ::testing::TestWithParam<const char*> {
// You can implement all the usual fixture class members here.
// To access the test parameter, call GetParam() from class
// TestWithParam<T>.
};
// Or, when you want to add parameters to a pre-existing fixture class:
class BaseTest : public ::testing::Test {
...
};
class BarTest : public BaseTest,
public ::testing::WithParamInterface<const char*> {
...
};
Then, use the TEST_P
macro to define as many test patterns using this fixture
as you want. The _P
suffix is for "parameterized" or "pattern", whichever you
prefer to think.
TEST_P(FooTest, DoesBlah) {
// Inside a test, access the test parameter with the GetParam() method
// of the TestWithParam<T> class:
EXPECT_TRUE(foo.Blah(GetParam()));
...
}
TEST_P(FooTest, HasBlahBlah) {
...
}
Finally, you can use INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P
to instantiate the test case with
any set of parameters you want. googletest defines a number of functions for
generating test parameters. They return what we call (surprise!) parameter
generators. Here is a summary of them, which are all in the testing
namespace:
Parameter Generator | Behavior |
---|---|
Range(begin, end [, step]) |
Yields values {begin, begin+step, begin+step+step, ...} . The values do not include end . step defaults to 1. |
Values(v1, v2, ..., vN) |
Yields values {v1, v2, ..., vN} . |
ValuesIn(container) and ValuesIn(begin,end) |
Yields values from a C-style array, an STL-style container, or an iterator range [begin, end) . |
Bool() |
Yields sequence {false, true} . |
Combine(g1, g2, ..., gN) |
Yields all combinations (Cartesian product) as std::tuples of the values generated by the N generators. |
For more details, see the comments at the definitions of these functions.
The following statement will instantiate tests from the FooTest
test case each
with parameter values "meeny"
, "miny"
, and "moe"
.
INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P(InstantiationName,
FooTest,
::testing::Values("meeny", "miny", "moe"));
NOTE: The code above must be placed at global or namespace scope, not at function scope.
NOTE: Don't forget this step! If you do your test will silently pass, but none of its cases will ever run!
To distinguish different instances of the pattern (yes, you can instantiate it
more than once), the first argument to INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P
is a prefix
that will be added to the actual test case name. Remember to pick unique
prefixes for different instantiations. The tests from the instantiation above
will have these names:
InstantiationName/FooTest.DoesBlah/0
for "meeny"
InstantiationName/FooTest.DoesBlah/1
for "miny"
InstantiationName/FooTest.DoesBlah/2
for "moe"
InstantiationName/FooTest.HasBlahBlah/0
for "meeny"
InstantiationName/FooTest.HasBlahBlah/1
for "miny"
InstantiationName/FooTest.HasBlahBlah/2
for "moe"
You can use these names in --gtest_filter
.
This statement will instantiate all tests from FooTest
again, each with
parameter values "cat"
and "dog"
:
const char* pets[] = {"cat", "dog"};
INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P(AnotherInstantiationName, FooTest,
::testing::ValuesIn(pets));
The tests from the instantiation above will have these names:
AnotherInstantiationName/FooTest.DoesBlah/0
for "cat"
AnotherInstantiationName/FooTest.DoesBlah/1
for "dog"
AnotherInstantiationName/FooTest.HasBlahBlah/0
for "cat"
AnotherInstantiationName/FooTest.HasBlahBlah/1
for "dog"
Please note that INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P
will instantiate all tests in the
given test case, whether their definitions come before or after the
INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P
statement.
You can see sample7_unittest.cc and sample8_unittest.cc for more examples.
Availability: Linux, Windows (requires MSVC 8.0 or above), Mac
In the above, we define and instantiate FooTest
in the same source file.
Sometimes you may want to define value-parameterized tests in a library and let
other people instantiate them later. This pattern is known as abstract tests.
As an example of its application, when you are designing an interface you can
write a standard suite of abstract tests (perhaps using a factory function as
the test parameter) that all implementations of the interface are expected to
pass. When someone implements the interface, they can instantiate your suite to
get all the interface-conformance tests for free.
To define abstract tests, you should organize your code like this:
FooTest
)
in a header file, say foo_param_test.h
. Think of this as declaring your
abstract tests.TEST_P
definitions in foo_param_test.cc
, which includes
foo_param_test.h
. Think of this as implementing your abstract tests.Once they are defined, you can instantiate them by including foo_param_test.h
,
invoking INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P()
, and depending on the library target that
contains foo_param_test.cc
. You can instantiate the same abstract test case
multiple times, possibly in different source files.
The optional last argument to INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P()
allows the user to
specify a function or functor that generates custom test name suffixes based on
the test parameters. The function should accept one argument of type
testing::TestParamInfo<class ParamType>
, and return std::string
.
testing::PrintToStringParamName
is a builtin test suffix generator that
returns the value of testing::PrintToString(GetParam())
. It does not work for
std::string
or C strings.
NOTE: test names must be non-empty, unique, and may only contain ASCII alphanumeric characters. In particular, they should not contain underscores.
class MyTestCase : public testing::TestWithParam<int> {};
TEST_P(MyTestCase, MyTest)
{
std::cout << "Example Test Param: " << GetParam() << std::endl;
}
INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P(MyGroup, MyTestCase, testing::Range(0, 10),
testing::PrintToStringParamName());
Suppose you have multiple implementations of the same interface and want to make sure that all of them satisfy some common requirements. Or, you may have defined several types that are supposed to conform to the same "concept" and you want to verify it. In both cases, you want the same test logic repeated for different types.
While you can write one TEST
or TEST_F
for each type you want to test (and
you may even factor the test logic into a function template that you invoke from
the TEST
), it's tedious and doesn't scale: if you want m
tests over n
types, you'll end up writing m*n
TEST
s.
Typed tests allow you to repeat the same test logic over a list of types. You only need to write the test logic once, although you must know the type list when writing typed tests. Here's how you do it:
First, define a fixture class template. It should be parameterized by a type.
Remember to derive it from ::testing::Test
:
template <typename T>
class FooTest : public ::testing::Test {
public:
...
typedef std::list<T> List;
static T shared_;
T value_;
};
Next, associate a list of types with the test case, which will be repeated for each type in the list:
using MyTypes = ::testing::Types<char, int, unsigned int>;
TYPED_TEST_CASE(FooTest, MyTypes);
The type alias (using
or typedef
) is necessary for the TYPED_TEST_CASE
macro to parse correctly. Otherwise the compiler will think that each comma in
the type list introduces a new macro argument.
Then, use TYPED_TEST()
instead of TEST_F()
to define a typed test for this
test case. You can repeat this as many times as you want:
TYPED_TEST(FooTest, DoesBlah) {
// Inside a test, refer to the special name TypeParam to get the type
// parameter. Since we are inside a derived class template, C++ requires
// us to visit the members of FooTest via 'this'.
TypeParam n = this->value_;
// To visit static members of the fixture, add the 'TestFixture::'
// prefix.
n += TestFixture::shared_;
// To refer to typedefs in the fixture, add the 'typename TestFixture::'
// prefix. The 'typename' is required to satisfy the compiler.
typename TestFixture::List values;
values.push_back(n);
...
}
TYPED_TEST(FooTest, HasPropertyA) { ... }
You can see sample6_unittest.cc
Availability: Linux, Windows (requires MSVC 8.0 or above), Mac
Type-parameterized tests are like typed tests, except that they don't require you to know the list of types ahead of time. Instead, you can define the test logic first and instantiate it with different type lists later. You can even instantiate it more than once in the same program.
If you are designing an interface or concept, you can define a suite of type-parameterized tests to verify properties that any valid implementation of the interface/concept should have. Then, the author of each implementation can just instantiate the test suite with their type to verify that it conforms to the requirements, without having to write similar tests repeatedly. Here's an example:
First, define a fixture class template, as we did with typed tests:
template <typename T>
class FooTest : public ::testing::Test {
...
};
Next, declare that you will define a type-parameterized test case:
TYPED_TEST_CASE_P(FooTest);
Then, use TYPED_TEST_P()
to define a type-parameterized test. You can repeat
this as many times as you want:
TYPED_TEST_P(FooTest, DoesBlah) {
// Inside a test, refer to TypeParam to get the type parameter.
TypeParam n = 0;
...
}
TYPED_TEST_P(FooTest, HasPropertyA) { ... }
Now the tricky part: you need to register all test patterns using the
REGISTER_TYPED_TEST_CASE_P
macro before you can instantiate them. The first
argument of the macro is the test case name; the rest are the names of the tests
in this test case:
REGISTER_TYPED_TEST_CASE_P(FooTest,
DoesBlah, HasPropertyA);
Finally, you are free to instantiate the pattern with the types you want. If you
put the above code in a header file, you can #include
it in multiple C++
source files and instantiate it multiple times.
typedef ::testing::Types<char, int, unsigned int> MyTypes;
INSTANTIATE_TYPED_TEST_CASE_P(My, FooTest, MyTypes);
To distinguish different instances of the pattern, the first argument to the
INSTANTIATE_TYPED_TEST_CASE_P
macro is a prefix that will be added to the
actual test case name. Remember to pick unique prefixes for different instances.
In the special case where the type list contains only one type, you can write
that type directly without ::testing::Types<...>
, like this:
INSTANTIATE_TYPED_TEST_CASE_P(My, FooTest, int);
You can see sample6_unittest.cc
for a complete example.
Availability: Linux, Windows (requires MSVC 8.0 or above), Mac
If you change your software's internal implementation, your tests should not break as long as the change is not observable by users. Therefore, per the black-box testing principle, most of the time you should test your code through its public interfaces.
If you still find yourself needing to test internal implementation code, consider if there's a better design. The desire to test internal implementation is often a sign that the class is doing too much. Consider extracting an implementation class, and testing it. Then use that implementation class in the original class.
If you absolutely have to test non-public interface code though, you can. There are two cases to consider:
To test them, we use the following special techniques:
Both static functions and definitions/declarations in an unnamed namespace
are only visible within the same translation unit. To test them, you can
#include
the entire .cc
file being tested in your *_test.cc
file.
(including .cc
files is not a good way to reuse code - you should not do
this in production code!)
However, a better approach is to move the private code into the
foo::internal
namespace, where foo
is the namespace your project
normally uses, and put the private declarations in a *-internal.h
file.
Your production .cc
files and your tests are allowed to include this
internal header, but your clients are not. This way, you can fully test your
internal implementation without leaking it to your clients.
Private class members are only accessible from within the class or by friends. To access a class' private members, you can declare your test fixture as a friend to the class and define accessors in your fixture. Tests using the fixture can then access the private members of your production class via the accessors in the fixture. Note that even though your fixture is a friend to your production class, your tests are not automatically friends to it, as they are technically defined in sub-classes of the fixture.
Another way to test private members is to refactor them into an
implementation class, which is then declared in a *-internal.h
file. Your
clients aren't allowed to include this header but your tests can. Such is
called the
Pimpl
(Private Implementation) idiom.
Or, you can declare an individual test as a friend of your class by adding this line in the class body:
FRIEND_TEST(TestCaseName, TestName);
For example,
// foo.h
#include "gtest/gtest_prod.h"
class Foo {
...
private:
FRIEND_TEST(FooTest, BarReturnsZeroOnNull);
int Bar(void* x);
};
// foo_test.cc
...
TEST(FooTest, BarReturnsZeroOnNull) {
Foo foo;
EXPECT_EQ(0, foo.Bar(NULL)); // Uses Foo's private member Bar().
}
Pay special attention when your class is defined in a namespace, as you should define your test fixtures and tests in the same namespace if you want them to be friends of your class. For example, if the code to be tested looks like:
namespace my_namespace {
class Foo {
friend class FooTest;
FRIEND_TEST(FooTest, Bar);
FRIEND_TEST(FooTest, Baz);
... definition of the class Foo ...
};
} // namespace my_namespace
Your test code should be something like:
namespace my_namespace {
class FooTest : public ::testing::Test {
protected:
...
};
TEST_F(FooTest, Bar) { ... }
TEST_F(FooTest, Baz) { ... }
} // namespace my_namespace
If you are building a testing utility on top of googletest, you'll want to test your utility. What framework would you use to test it? googletest, of course.
The challenge is to verify that your testing utility reports failures correctly. In frameworks that report a failure by throwing an exception, you could catch the exception and assert on it. But googletest doesn't use exceptions, so how do we test that a piece of code generates an expected failure?
gunit-spi.h contains some constructs to do this. After #including this header, you can use
EXPECT_FATAL_FAILURE(statement, substring);
to assert that statement
generates a fatal (e.g. ASSERT_*
) failure in the
current thread whose message contains the given substring
, or use
EXPECT_NONFATAL_FAILURE(statement, substring);
if you are expecting a non-fatal (e.g. EXPECT_*
) failure.
Only failures in the current thread are checked to determine the result of this
type of expectations. If statement
creates new threads, failures in these
threads are also ignored. If you want to catch failures in other threads as
well, use one of the following macros instead:
EXPECT_FATAL_FAILURE_ON_ALL_THREADS(statement, substring);
EXPECT_NONFATAL_FAILURE_ON_ALL_THREADS(statement, substring);
NOTE: Assertions from multiple threads are currently not supported on Windows.
For technical reasons, there are some caveats:
You cannot stream a failure message to either macro.
statement
in EXPECT_FATAL_FAILURE{_ON_ALL_THREADS}()
cannot reference
local non-static variables or non-static members of this
object.
statement
in EXPECT_FATAL_FAILURE{_ON_ALL_THREADS}()()
cannot return a
value.
Sometimes a function may need to know the name of the currently running test.
For example, you may be using the SetUp()
method of your test fixture to set
the golden file name based on which test is running. The ::testing::TestInfo
class has this information:
namespace testing {
class TestInfo {
public:
// Returns the test case name and the test name, respectively.
//
// Do NOT delete or free the return value - it's managed by the
// TestInfo class.
const char* test_case_name() const;
const char* name() const;
};
}
To obtain a TestInfo
object for the currently running test, call
current_test_info()
on the UnitTest
singleton object:
// Gets information about the currently running test.
// Do NOT delete the returned object - it's managed by the UnitTest class.
const ::testing::TestInfo* const test_info =
::testing::UnitTest::GetInstance()->current_test_info();
printf("We are in test %s of test case %s.\n",
test_info->name(),
test_info->test_case_name());
current_test_info()
returns a null pointer if no test is running. In
particular, you cannot find the test case name in TestCaseSetUp()
,
TestCaseTearDown()
(where you know the test case name implicitly), or
functions called from them.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
googletest provides an event listener API to let you receive notifications about the progress of a test program and test failures. The events you can listen to include the start and end of the test program, a test case, or a test method, among others. You may use this API to augment or replace the standard console output, replace the XML output, or provide a completely different form of output, such as a GUI or a database. You can also use test events as checkpoints to implement a resource leak checker, for example.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
To define a event listener, you subclass either testing::TestEventListener or
testing::EmptyTestEventListener The former is an (abstract) interface, where
each pure virtual method can be overridden to handle a test event (For
example, when a test starts, the OnTestStart()
method will be called.). The
latter provides an empty implementation of all methods in the interface, such
that a subclass only needs to override the methods it cares about.
When an event is fired, its context is passed to the handler function as an argument. The following argument types are used:
An event handler function can examine the argument it receives to find out interesting information about the event and the test program's state.
Here's an example:
class MinimalistPrinter : public ::testing::EmptyTestEventListener {
// Called before a test starts.
virtual void OnTestStart(const ::testing::TestInfo& test_info) {
printf("*** Test %s.%s starting.\n",
test_info.test_case_name(), test_info.name());
}
// Called after a failed assertion or a SUCCESS().
virtual void OnTestPartResult(const ::testing::TestPartResult& test_part_result) {
printf("%s in %s:%d\n%s\n",
test_part_result.failed() ? "*** Failure" : "Success",
test_part_result.file_name(),
test_part_result.line_number(),
test_part_result.summary());
}
// Called after a test ends.
virtual void OnTestEnd(const ::testing::TestInfo& test_info) {
printf("*** Test %s.%s ending.\n",
test_info.test_case_name(), test_info.name());
}
};
To use the event listener you have defined, add an instance of it to the
googletest event listener list (represented by class TestEventListeners - note
the "s" at the end of the name) in your main()
function, before calling
RUN_ALL_TESTS()
:
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
::testing::InitGoogleTest(&argc, argv);
// Gets hold of the event listener list.
::testing::TestEventListeners& listeners =
::testing::UnitTest::GetInstance()->listeners();
// Adds a listener to the end. googletest takes the ownership.
listeners.Append(new MinimalistPrinter);
return RUN_ALL_TESTS();
}
There's only one problem: the default test result printer is still in effect, so its output will mingle with the output from your minimalist printer. To suppress the default printer, just release it from the event listener list and delete it. You can do so by adding one line:
...
delete listeners.Release(listeners.default_result_printer());
listeners.Append(new MinimalistPrinter);
return RUN_ALL_TESTS();
Now, sit back and enjoy a completely different output from your tests. For more details, you can read this sample9_unittest.cc
You may append more than one listener to the list. When an On*Start()
or
OnTestPartResult()
event is fired, the listeners will receive it in the order
they appear in the list (since new listeners are added to the end of the list,
the default text printer and the default XML generator will receive the event
first). An On*End()
event will be received by the listeners in the reverse
order. This allows output by listeners added later to be framed by output from
listeners added earlier.
You may use failure-raising macros (EXPECT_*()
, ASSERT_*()
, FAIL()
, etc)
when processing an event. There are some restrictions:
OnTestPartResult()
(otherwise it will
cause OnTestPartResult()
to be called recursively).OnTestPartResult()
is not allowed to generate any
failure.When you add listeners to the listener list, you should put listeners that
handle OnTestPartResult()
before listeners that can generate failures. This
ensures that failures generated by the latter are attributed to the right test
by the former.
We have a sample of failure-raising listener sample10_unittest.cc
googletest test programs are ordinary executables. Once built, you can run them
directly and affect their behavior via the following environment variables
and/or command line flags. For the flags to work, your programs must call
::testing::InitGoogleTest()
before calling RUN_ALL_TESTS()
.
To see a list of supported flags and their usage, please run your test program
with the --help
flag. You can also use -h
, -?
, or /?
for short.
If an option is specified both by an environment variable and by a flag, the latter takes precedence.
Sometimes it is necessary to list the available tests in a program before
running them so that a filter may be applied if needed. Including the flag
--gtest_list_tests
overrides all other flags and lists tests in the following
format:
TestCase1.
TestName1
TestName2
TestCase2.
TestName
None of the tests listed are actually run if the flag is provided. There is no corresponding environment variable for this flag.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
By default, a googletest program runs all tests the user has defined. Sometimes,
you want to run only a subset of the tests (e.g. for debugging or quickly
verifying a change). If you set the GTEST_FILTER
environment variable or the
--gtest_filter
flag to a filter string, googletest will only run the tests
whose full names (in the form of TestCaseName.TestName
) match the filter.
The format of a filter is a ':
'-separated list of wildcard patterns (called
the positive patterns) optionally followed by a '-
' and another
':
'-separated pattern list (called the negative patterns). A test matches
the filter if and only if it matches any of the positive patterns but does not
match any of the negative patterns.
A pattern may contain '*'
(matches any string) or '?'
(matches any single
character). For convenience, the filter
'*-NegativePatterns'
can be also written as '-NegativePatterns'
.
For example:
./foo_test
Has no flag, and thus runs all its tests../foo_test --gtest_filter=*
Also runs everything, due to the single
match-everything *
value../foo_test --gtest_filter=FooTest.*
Runs everything in test case FooTest
../foo_test --gtest_filter=*Null*:*Constructor*
Runs any test whose full
name contains either "Null"
or "Constructor"
../foo_test --gtest_filter=-*DeathTest.*
Runs all non-death tests../foo_test --gtest_filter=FooTest.*-FooTest.Bar
Runs everything in test
case FooTest
except FooTest.Bar
../foo_test --gtest_filter=FooTest.*:BarTest.*-FooTest.Bar:BarTest.Foo
Runs
everything in test case FooTest
except FooTest.Bar
and everything in
test case BarTest
except BarTest.Foo
.
If you have a broken test that you cannot fix right away, you can add the
DISABLED_
prefix to its name. This will exclude it from execution. This is
better than commenting out the code or using #if 0
, as disabled tests are
still compiled (and thus won't rot).
If you need to disable all tests in a test case, you can either add DISABLED_
to the front of the name of each test, or alternatively add it to the front of
the test case name.
For example, the following tests won't be run by googletest, even though they will still be compiled:
// Tests that Foo does Abc.
TEST(FooTest, DISABLED_DoesAbc) { ... }
class DISABLED_BarTest : public ::testing::Test { ... };
// Tests that Bar does Xyz.
TEST_F(DISABLED_BarTest, DoesXyz) { ... }
NOTE: This feature should only be used for temporary pain-relief. You still have to fix the disabled tests at a later date. As a reminder, googletest will print a banner warning you if a test program contains any disabled tests.
TIP: You can easily count the number of disabled tests you have using gsearch
and/or grep
. This number can be used as a metric for improving your test
quality.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
To include disabled tests in test execution, just invoke the test program with
the --gtest_also_run_disabled_tests
flag or set the
GTEST_ALSO_RUN_DISABLED_TESTS
environment variable to a value other than 0
.
You can combine this with the --gtest_filter
flag to further select which
disabled tests to run.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
Once in a while you'll run into a test whose result is hit-or-miss. Perhaps it will fail only 1% of the time, making it rather hard to reproduce the bug under a debugger. This can be a major source of frustration.
The --gtest_repeat
flag allows you to repeat all (or selected) test methods in
a program many times. Hopefully, a flaky test will eventually fail and give you
a chance to debug. Here's how to use it:
$ foo_test --gtest_repeat=1000
Repeat foo_test 1000 times and don't stop at failures.
$ foo_test --gtest_repeat=-1
A negative count means repeating forever.
$ foo_test --gtest_repeat=1000 --gtest_break_on_failure
Repeat foo_test 1000 times, stopping at the first failure. This
is especially useful when running under a debugger: when the test
fails, it will drop into the debugger and you can then inspect
variables and stacks.
$ foo_test --gtest_repeat=1000 --gtest_filter=FooBar.*
Repeat the tests whose name matches the filter 1000 times.
If your test program contains global set-up/tear-down code, it
will be repeated in each iteration as well, as the flakiness may be in it. You
can also specify the repeat count by setting the GTEST_REPEAT
environment
variable.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
You can specify the --gtest_shuffle
flag (or set the GTEST_SHUFFLE
environment variable to 1
) to run the tests in a program in a random order.
This helps to reveal bad dependencies between tests.
By default, googletest uses a random seed calculated from the current time.
Therefore you'll get a different order every time. The console output includes
the random seed value, such that you can reproduce an order-related test failure
later. To specify the random seed explicitly, use the --gtest_random_seed=SEED
flag (or set the GTEST_RANDOM_SEED
environment variable), where SEED
is an
integer in the range [0, 99999]. The seed value 0 is special: it tells
googletest to do the default behavior of calculating the seed from the current
time.
If you combine this with --gtest_repeat=N
, googletest will pick a different
random seed and re-shuffle the tests in each iteration.
Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
googletest can use colors in its terminal output to make it easier to spot the important information:
... You can set the Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac. By default, googletest prints the time it takes to run each test. To disable
that, run the test program with the Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac. In case of assertion failures, googletest prints expected and actual values of
type Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac. googletest can emit a detailed XML report to a file in addition to its normal
textual output. The report contains the duration of each test, and thus can help
you identify slow tests. The report is also used by the http://unittest
dashboard to show per-test-method error messages. To generate the XML report, set the If you specify a directory (for example, The report is based on the For instance, the following program could generate this report: Things to note: The The The Each Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac. googletest can also emit a JSON report as an alternative format to XML. To
generate the JSON report, set the The report format conforms to the following JSON Schema: The report uses the format that conforms to the following Proto3 using the JSON
encoding: For instance, the following program could generate this report: IMPORTANT: The exact format of the JSON document is subject to change. Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac. When running test programs under a debugger, it's very convenient if the
debugger can catch an assertion failure and automatically drop into interactive
mode. googletest's break-on-failure mode supports this behavior. To enable it, set the Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac. googletest can be used either with or without exceptions enabled. If a test
throws a C++ exception or (on Windows) a structured exception (SEH), by default
googletest catches it, reports it as a test failure, and continues with the next
test method. This maximizes the coverage of a test run. Also, on Windows an
uncaught exception will cause a pop-up window, so catching the exceptions allows
you to run the tests automatically. When debugging the test failures, however, you may instead want the exceptions
to be handled by the debugger, such that you can examine the call stack when an
exception is thrown. To achieve that, set the Availability: Linux, Windows, Mac.
[----------] 1 test from FooTest
[ RUN ] FooTest.DoesAbc
[ OK ] FooTest.DoesAbc
[----------] 2 tests from BarTest
[ RUN ] BarTest.HasXyzProperty
[ OK ] BarTest.HasXyzProperty
[ RUN ] BarTest.ReturnsTrueOnSuccess
... some error messages ...
[ FAILED ] BarTest.ReturnsTrueOnSuccess
...
[==========] 30 tests from 14 test cases ran.
[ PASSED ] 28 tests.
[ FAILED ] 2 tests, listed below:
[ FAILED ] BarTest.ReturnsTrueOnSuccess
[ FAILED ] AnotherTest.DoesXyz
2 FAILED TESTS
GTEST_COLOR
environment variable or the --gtest_color
command line flag to yes
, no
, or auto
(the default) to enable colors,
disable colors, or let googletest decide. When the value is auto
, googletest
will use colors if and only if the output goes to a terminal and (on non-Windows
platforms) the TERM
environment variable is set to xterm
or xterm-color
.Suppressing the Elapsed Time
--gtest_print_time=0
command line flag, or
set the GTEST_PRINT_TIME environment variable to 0
.Suppressing UTF-8 Text Output
string
both as hex-encoded strings as well as in readable UTF-8 text if
they contain valid non-ASCII UTF-8 characters. If you want to suppress the UTF-8
text because, for example, you don't have an UTF-8 compatible output medium, run
the test program with --gtest_print_utf8=0
or set the GTEST_PRINT_UTF8
environment variable to 0
.Generating an XML Report
GTEST_OUTPUT
environment variable or the
--gtest_output
flag to the string "xml:path_to_output_file"
, which will
create the file at the given location. You can also just use the string "xml"
,
in which case the output can be found in the test_detail.xml
file in the
current directory."xml:output/directory/"
on Linux or
"xml:output\directory\"
on Windows), googletest will create the XML file in
that directory, named after the test executable (e.g. foo_test.xml
for test
program foo_test
or foo_test.exe
). If the file already exists (perhaps left
over from a previous run), googletest will pick a different name (e.g.
foo_test_1.xml
) to avoid overwriting it.junitreport
Ant task. Since that format was
originally intended for Java, a little interpretation is required to make it
apply to googletest tests, as shown here:<testsuites name="AllTests" ...>
<testsuite name="test_case_name" ...>
<testcase name="test_name" ...>
<failure message="..."/>
<failure message="..."/>
<failure message="..."/>
</testcase>
</testsuite>
</testsuites>
<testsuites>
element corresponds to the entire test program.<testsuite>
elements correspond to googletest test cases.<testcase>
elements correspond to googletest test functions.TEST(MathTest, Addition) { ... }
TEST(MathTest, Subtraction) { ... }
TEST(LogicTest, NonContradiction) { ... }
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<testsuites tests="3" failures="1" errors="0" time="0.035" timestamp="2011-10-31T18:52:42" name="AllTests">
<testsuite name="MathTest" tests="2" failures="1" errors="0" time="0.015">
<testcase name="Addition" status="run" time="0.007" classname="">
<failure message="Value of: add(1, 1)
 Actual: 3
Expected: 2" type="">...</failure>
<failure message="Value of: add(1, -1)
 Actual: 1
Expected: 0" type="">...</failure>
</testcase>
<testcase name="Subtraction" status="run" time="0.005" classname="">
</testcase>
</testsuite>
<testsuite name="LogicTest" tests="1" failures="0" errors="0" time="0.005">
<testcase name="NonContradiction" status="run" time="0.005" classname="">
</testcase>
</testsuite>
</testsuites>
tests
attribute of a <testsuites>
or <testsuite>
element tells how
many test functions the googletest program or test case contains, while the
failures
attribute tells how many of them failed.time
attribute expresses the duration of the test, test case, or
entire test program in seconds.timestamp
attribute records the local date and time of the test
execution.<failure>
element corresponds to a single failed googletest
assertion.Generating an JSON Report
GTEST_OUTPUT
environment variable or the
--gtest_output
flag to the string "json:path_to_output_file"
, which will
create the file at the given location. You can also just use the string
"json"
, in which case the output can be found in the test_detail.json
file
in the current directory.{
"$schema": "http://json-schema.org/schema#",
"type": "object",
"definitions": {
"TestCase": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"name": { "type": "string" },
"tests": { "type": "integer" },
"failures": { "type": "integer" },
"disabled": { "type": "integer" },
"time": { "type": "string" },
"testsuite": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"$ref": "#/definitions/TestInfo"
}
}
}
},
"TestInfo": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"name": { "type": "string" },
"status": {
"type": "string",
"enum": ["RUN", "NOTRUN"]
},
"time": { "type": "string" },
"classname": { "type": "string" },
"failures": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"$ref": "#/definitions/Failure"
}
}
}
},
"Failure": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"failures": { "type": "string" },
"type": { "type": "string" }
}
}
},
"properties": {
"tests": { "type": "integer" },
"failures": { "type": "integer" },
"disabled": { "type": "integer" },
"errors": { "type": "integer" },
"timestamp": {
"type": "string",
"format": "date-time"
},
"time": { "type": "string" },
"name": { "type": "string" },
"testsuites": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"$ref": "#/definitions/TestCase"
}
}
}
}
syntax = "proto3";
package googletest;
import "google/protobuf/timestamp.proto";
import "google/protobuf/duration.proto";
message UnitTest {
int32 tests = 1;
int32 failures = 2;
int32 disabled = 3;
int32 errors = 4;
google.protobuf.Timestamp timestamp = 5;
google.protobuf.Duration time = 6;
string name = 7;
repeated TestCase testsuites = 8;
}
message TestCase {
string name = 1;
int32 tests = 2;
int32 failures = 3;
int32 disabled = 4;
int32 errors = 5;
google.protobuf.Duration time = 6;
repeated TestInfo testsuite = 7;
}
message TestInfo {
string name = 1;
enum Status {
RUN = 0;
NOTRUN = 1;
}
Status status = 2;
google.protobuf.Duration time = 3;
string classname = 4;
message Failure {
string failures = 1;
string type = 2;
}
repeated Failure failures = 5;
}
TEST(MathTest, Addition) { ... }
TEST(MathTest, Subtraction) { ... }
TEST(LogicTest, NonContradiction) { ... }
{
"tests": 3,
"failures": 1,
"errors": 0,
"time": "0.035s",
"timestamp": "2011-10-31T18:52:42Z"
"name": "AllTests",
"testsuites": [
{
"name": "MathTest",
"tests": 2,
"failures": 1,
"errors": 0,
"time": "0.015s",
"testsuite": [
{
"name": "Addition",
"status": "RUN",
"time": "0.007s",
"classname": "",
"failures": [
{
"message": "Value of: add(1, 1)\x0A Actual: 3\x0AExpected: 2",
"type": ""
},
{
"message": "Value of: add(1, -1)\x0A Actual: 1\x0AExpected: 0",
"type": ""
}
]
},
{
"name": "Subtraction",
"status": "RUN",
"time": "0.005s",
"classname": ""
}
]
}
{
"name": "LogicTest",
"tests": 1,
"failures": 0,
"errors": 0,
"time": "0.005s",
"testsuite": [
{
"name": "NonContradiction",
"status": "RUN",
"time": "0.005s",
"classname": ""
}
]
}
]
}
Controlling How Failures Are Reported
Turning Assertion Failures into Break-Points
GTEST_BREAK_ON_FAILURE
environment variable to a value
other than 0
. Alternatively, you can use the --gtest_break_on_failure
command line flag.Disabling Catching Test-Thrown Exceptions
GTEST_CATCH_EXCEPTIONS
environment variable to 0
, or use the --gtest_catch_exceptions=0
flag when
running the tests.