Result Writers

Result Writers take the result of a test run, in NUnit 3 XML format, and use it to create a result file in some other format. The NUnit Organization itself provides a two result writers, one to create output in NUnit V2 format and another to write test cases to the console. The definition of a result writer extension might look something like this:

[Extension]
[ExtensionProperty("Format", "custom")]
public class CustomResultWriterFactory : IResultWriter
{
    /* ... */
}

An ExtensionPropertyAttribute must be provided giving the name of the format you support. Users would access the format from the NUnit Console command-line by using that name in a result specification, such as:

   nunit-console test.dll --result=CustomResult.xml;format=custom

The IResultWriter interface which must be implemented, is defined as follows:

/// <summary>
/// Common interface for objects that process and write out test results
/// </summary>
[TypeExtensionPoint(
    Description = "Supplies a writer to write the result of a test to a file using a specific format.")]
public interface IResultWriter
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Checks if the output path is writable. If the output is not
    /// writable, this method should throw an exception.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="outputPath">Path to test</param>
    void CheckWritability(string outputPath);

    /// <summary>
    /// Writes result to the specified output path.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="resultNode">XmlNode for the result</param>
    /// <param name="outputPath">Path to which it should be written</param>
    void WriteResultFile(XmlNode resultNode, string outputPath);

    /// <summary>
    /// Writes result to a TextWriter.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="resultNode">XmlNode for the result</param>
    /// <param name="writer">TextWriter to which it should be written</param>
    void WriteResultFile(XmlNode resultNode, TextWriter writer);
}

The engine calls the CheckWritability method at the start of the run, before executing any tests. The WriteResultFile method is called after the run is complete. The writer may check writability in any way desired, including writing an abbreviated output file, which it will later overwrite.