Helpers for defining test cases.

This module must be used in other modules as a way to configure and prepare them for testing.

When used, it accepts the following options:

• :async - configure this specific test case to run in parallel with other test cases. May be used for performance when this test case does not change any global state. Defaults to false.

This module automatically includes all callbacks defined in ExUnit.Callbacks. See that module for more information on setup, start_supervised, on_exit and the test process lifecycle.

For grouping tests together, see describe/2 in this module.

Examples

 defmodule AssertionTest do
   # Use the module
   use ExUnit.Case, async: true

   # The "test" macro is imported by ExUnit.Case
   test "always pass" do
     assert true
   end
 end

Context

All tests receive a context as an argument. The context is particularly useful for sharing information between callbacks and tests:

defmodule KVTest do
  use ExUnit.Case

  setup do
    {:ok, pid} = KV.start_link
    {:ok, pid: pid}
  end

  test "stores key-value pairs", context do
    assert KV.put(context[:pid], :hello, :world) == :ok
    assert KV.get(context[:pid], :hello) == :world
  end
end

As the context is a map, it can be pattern matched on to extract information:

test "stores key-value pairs", %{pid: pid} do
  assert KV.put(pid, :hello, :world) == :ok
  assert KV.get(pid, :hello) == :world
end

Tags

The context is used to pass information from the callbacks to the test. In order to pass information from the test to the callback, ExUnit provides tags.

By tagging a test, the tag value can be accessed in the context, allowing the developer to customize the test. Let’s see an example:

defmodule FileTest do
  # Changing directory cannot be async
  use ExUnit.Case, async: false

  setup context do
    # Read the :cd tag value
    if cd = context[:cd] do
      prev_cd = File.cwd!
      File.cd!(cd)
      on_exit fn -> File.cd!(prev_cd) end
    end

    :ok
  end

  @tag cd: "fixtures"
  test "reads UTF-8 fixtures" do
    File.read("hello")
  end
end

In the example above, we have defined a tag called :cd that is read in the setup callback to configure the working directory the test is going to run on.

Tags are also very effective when used with case templates (ExUnit.CaseTemplate) allowing callbacks in the case template to customize the test behaviour.

Note a tag can be set in two different ways:

@tag key: value
@tag :key       # equivalent to setting @tag key: true

If a tag is given more than once, the last value wins.

Module and describe tags

A tag can be set for all tests in a module or describe block by setting @moduletag or @describetag respectively:

@moduletag :external

If the same key is set via @tag, the @tag value has higher precedence.

Known tags

The following tags are set automatically by ExUnit and are therefore reserved:

• :case - the test case module
• :file - the file on which the test was defined
• :line - the line on which the test was defined
• :test - the test name
• :async - if the test case is in async mode
• :type - the type of the test (:test, :property, etc)
• :registered - used for ExUnit.Case.register_attribute/3 values
• :describe - the describe block the test belongs to

The following tags customize how tests behaves:

• :capture_log - see the “Log Capture” section below
• :skip - skips the test with the given reason
• :timeout - customizes the test timeout in milliseconds (defaults to 60000)
• :report - includes the given tags and context keys on error reports, see the “Reporting tags” section

Reporting tags

ExUnit also allows tags or any other key in your context to be included in error reports, making it easy for developers to see under which circumstances a test was evaluated. To do so, you use the :report tag:

@moduletag report: [:user_id, :server]

Now when an error happens, there is a tags section containing the value for each reported field:

code: flunk “oops” stacktrace:

 lib/my_lib/source.exs:148

tags:

 user_id: 1
 server: #PID<0.63.0>

Filters

Tags can also be used to identify specific tests, which can then be included or excluded using filters. The most common functionality is to exclude some particular tests from running, which can be done via ExUnit.configure/1:

# Exclude all external tests from running
ExUnit.configure(exclude: [external: true])

From now on, ExUnit will not run any test that has the external flag set to true. This behaviour can be reversed with the :include option which is usually passed through the command line:

mix test --include external:true

Run mix help test for more information on how to run filters via Mix.

Another use case for tags and filters is to exclude all tests that have a particular tag by default, regardless of its value, and include only a certain subset:

ExUnit.configure(exclude: :os, include: [os: :unix])

Keep in mind that all tests are included by default, so unless they are excluded first, the include option has no effect.

Log Capture

ExUnit can optionally suppress printing of log messages that are generated during a test. Log messages generated while running a test are captured and only if the test fails are they printed to aid with debugging.

You can opt into this behaviour for individual tests by tagging them with :capture_log or enable log capture for all tests in the ExUnit configuration:

ExUnit.start(capture_log: true)

This default can be overridden by @tag capture_log: false or @moduletag capture_log: false.

Since setup_all blocks don’t belong to a specific test, log messages generated in them (or between tests) are never captured. If you want to suppress these messages as well, remove the console backend globally:

config :logger, backends: []