Compatibility

taptaptap is only supposed to be working with python 2.7 (due to with statements and argparse). It has been tested with Linux 3.8 x86_64. A version for python 3.x is (not yet?) available. It fully supports unicode.

The File Format

A basic introduction is given by Wikipedia. The format was specified by the Perl community.

• The Wikipedia article

• Original specification

• Test::Harness

Testsuite & Examples

taptaptap comes with a testsuite, which covers many special cases of the TAP format and tests the provided APIs. Please don’t hesitate to report any issues.

You can run the taptaptap testcases yourself using:

./run.sh

in the tests directory. The testsuite also shows some API usage examples, but I want to provide some here. The procedural API is well-suited if you are in the python REPL:

from taptaptap.proc import plan, ok, not_ok, out
plan(tests=10)
ok('Starting the robot')
not_ok('Starting the engine')
not_ok('Find the object', skip='Setup required')
not_ok('Terminate', skip='Setup required')

out()

The output looks like this:

1..10
ok - Starting the robot
not ok - Starting the engine
not ok - Find the object  # SKIP Setup required
not ok - Terminate  # SKIP Setup required

Be aware that the state is stored within the module. This is not what you want if you are outside the REPL. The TapWriter class is more convenient in this case:

import taptaptap

writer = taptaptap.TapWriter()
writer.plan(1, 3)
writer.ok('This testcase went fine')
writer.ok('And another one')
writer.ok('And also the last one')

If you like python’s generators, you want to use SimpleTapCreator:

@taptaptap.SimpleTapCreator
def runTests():
    yield True
    yield True
    yield False

print runTests()

Giving us:

1..3
ok
ok
not ok

Or take a look at the more sophisticated TapCreator. If you are a real expert, you can use TapDocument directly, which covers all possibilities of TAP.

Command line tools

You can also invoke taptaptap directly from the command line:

python -m taptaptap.__main__ some_tap_file_to_validate.tap

This command will parse the file and write the file in a way how it was understood by the module. The exit code indicates its validity:

0

Everything fine.

1

The TAP file is missing some testcases or contains failed testcases.

2

A bailout was raised. So the testing environment crashed during the run.

Pickling

All objects are pickable.

When to use taptaptap

Does taptaptap suite your needs? It does, if you are looking for a parser and validator for your TAP documents and you don’t want to care about details and just need a gentle API.

best regards, meisterluk