How to change unittest console log

hi, I've got a parametrized test (using a Test Class) which produces the following text when an assertion fails: p1 and p2 are cell arrays in the ClassSetupParameter properties section.

 properties(ClassSetupParameter)
  p2 = {{'foo',1},{'foo',2},{'bar',1},{'bar',2},{'bar',3}};
  p1 = {'a', 'b'};
 end

When I run a test suite based on this class

 suite = matlab.unittest.TestSuite.fromClass(?myTest)
 res = runner.run(suite);

I get this text which references the current cell in p1.

 Assertion failed while setting up or tearing down myTest[p1=a,p2=value1].
 As a result, all myTest[p1=a,p2=value1] tests failed and did not run to 
 completion.

How do I edit this text? I'd like to get rid of the text 'value6' and replace with a concatenated value of both the cells, i.e: something like this

 Assertion failed while setting up or tearing down myTest[p1=a,p2=foo-1].
 As a result, all myTest[p1=a,p2=foo-1] tests failed and did not run to 
 completion.

or

 Assertion failed while setting up or tearing down myTest[p1=a,p2=bar-3].
 As a result, all myTest[p1=a,p2=bar-3] tests failed and did not run to 
 completion.

Answer 1

[Andy Campbell]

Hi Jack,

You can do this by using the struct syntax to define the parameters, which allows you to give a label to the parameter value as the struct field. This looks like the following:

    properties(ClassSetupParameter)
        p2 = struct('foo_1', {{'foo',1}}, 'foo_2', {{'foo',2}},...
            'bar_1', {{'bar',1}}, 'bar_2', {{'bar',2}}, 'bar_3', {{'bar',3}});
        p1 = {'a', 'b'};
    end

Note that if your data is in cell arrays you need to use the "double" cell array syntax when making it part of a struct. Alternatively you can do this the following way if you prefer:

classdef tfoo < matlab.unittest.TestCase
  properties(ClassSetupParameter)
      p2 = createP2;
      p1 = {'a', 'b'};
  end
%...
end % classdef
% at the bottom of the file define the local function
function p2 = createP2
p2.foo_1 = {'foo',1};
p2.foo_1 = {'foo',2};
p2.bar_1 = {'bar',1};
p2.bar_2 = {'bar',2};
p2.bar_3 = {'bar',3};
end

Also, cell arrays of strings are a special case where we can usually do a pretty good job of showing the label as just the string itself, although if the string is not a valid variable name the label is modified to become one.

Hope that helps! Andy

Answer 2

[Christian Heigele]

I had the same problem, and since the creation of those test names is not injectable, I did a nasty workaround:

This whole test-name is completely decoupled from the data that is provided with each test-case. Hence you can just overwrite / shadow the method that creates those test-names.

The parameter-part of those test-names is created in matlab.unittest.internal.getParameterNameString

So if you create a method within package-folders in your path that matches this method name, you'll just shadow the original implementation.

There I switched out the paramNames line with: paramNames = arrayfun(@(p) transformThingToString(p.Value), params, 'UniformOutput', false);

And transformThingToString is a method that is able to translate an arbitrary object to something "displayable". Arrays / strings / cells / char-arrays are trivial, most of our classes have an toString-extension, function handles are translated with func2str.

Not nice, not stable, but because we don't switch out the matlab version on our test-agents all the time, this is working fine for us.