Purpose of NUnit Parser?
Asked by Neal Culiner:

I have the NUnit runner working and tests are working. I'm new to unit testing and we're using NUnit. I hooked up the parser and it created a file, just not sure the purpose or what to do with it. Is Bamboo supposed to display some nicely formatted test result somewhere? Can someone please explain the value of the NUnit parser and how to use it?

Thank you.


Answers:
author: Marcin Oles
body: Hi Neal,

The NUnit Runner (or basically any other test runner, like Mocha Test Runner or MSTest Runner) will execute tests. Running tests will produce report file(s) - the report format depends on testing framework, in NUnit case it should be an XML file. The Runner task afterwards will automatically gather test results, making it easy to browse test results in Bamboo.

However, you can execute tests in a custom way, not using the Runner task. For example, using a shell script - for any reasons you may have. Such execution will produce the report XML file with test results, however, it will not gather the results and will not make it browseable in Bamboo.

NUnit parser is a task that parses the XML results after tests were run (by \*any\* other method), and displays the test results in Bamboo. You could say it is the last phase of NUnit runner, it just skips the test execution part.

Having parsers and runners separate usually gives users more choice and more tools to use. If you do not need the parser (if the runner does all the work for you), just don't use it as it's not necessary (I'd even say it's not recommended, only use it in advanced use cases).

Task descriptions should also give you a hint what they do:

* NUnit Runner: Executes, parses and displays NUnit test results
* NUnit Parser: Parses and displays NUnit test results

(the execution of tests is skipped)

Cheers,  
Marcin

comments: author: tommi_lehto_hotelplan
body: Hi Marcin,

Thjanks for clarifying. Could it be possible to add your explanation of purpose of NUnit Test Parser here: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/nunit-parser-289277054.html>

In order to try to to figure out what this "undocument blackbox" :-) is doing, I checked the log-file:

```
simple 08-Mar-2018 10:06:39 Starting task 'Set NUnit Test result Bamboo summary' of type 'com.atlassian.bamboo.plugin.dotnet:nunit'
simple 08-Mar-2018 10:06:39 Parsing test results under D:\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\DMC-MJFCOMMON01-HPGSIACGETSRC...
simple 08-Mar-2018 10:06:39 Finished task 'Set NUnit Test result Bamboo summary' with result: Succes
```

Unfortunately Build-Logs were not really helpful due to truncating of messages.

Hence, could it be possible to a) get full, non-truncated log output and b) more detailed informatuion, like what unit test resutls files were truly read.


author: Pouya Panahy
body: Hi Marcin,  
Thanks for explaining the process of getting test results within bamboo.   
You mentioned that NUnit parser is used to display the test results in Bamboo. Where exactly we can see this results?

thx  
Pouya

comments: author: devpartisan
body: When the Bamboo build plan is properly configured, you should be able to [view test results for a build](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/viewing-test-results-for-a-build-289276936.html) in the test tab.


Tags: bamboo-administration

nunit