Formatters and Reporters

behave provides 2 different concepts for reporting results of a test run:

• formatters
• reporters

A slightly different interface is provided for each “formatter” concept. The Formatter is informed about each step that is taken. The Reporter has a more coarse-grained API.

Formatters

The following formatters are currently supported:

Name	Mode	Description
help	normal	Shows all registered formatters.
json	normal	JSON dump of test run
json.pretty	normal	JSON dump of test run (human readable)
plain	normal	Very basic formatter with maximum compatibility
pretty	normal	Standard colourised pretty formatter
progress	normal	Shows dotted progress for each executed scenario.
progress2	normal	Shows dotted progress for each executed step.
progress3	normal	Shows detailed progress for each step of a scenario.
rerun	normal	Emits scenario file locations of failing scenarios
sphinx.steps	dry-run	Generate sphinx-based documentation for step definitions.
steps	dry-run	Shows step definitions (step implementations).
steps.doc	dry-run	Shows documentation for step definitions.
steps.usage	dry-run	Shows how step definitions are used by steps (in feature files).
tags	dry-run	Shows tags (and how often they are used).
tags.location	dry-run	Shows tags and the location where they are used.

Note

You can use more that one formatter during a test run. But in general you have only one formatter that writes to stdout.

The “Mode” column indicates if a formatter is intended to be used in dry-run (--dry-run command-line option) or normal mode.

Reporters

The following reporters are currently supported:

Name	Description
junit	Provides JUnit XML-like output.
summary	Provides a summary of the test run.