TestResult

TestResult is a data structure used by software testing frameworks to encapsulate the outcome of an individual test case or a collection of tests. It records whether the test succeeded, failed, was skipped, or errored, and typically stores diagnostic information to aid debugging. A TestResult may include fields such as status (e.g., passed, failed, skipped, error), test Name or identifier, duration (elapsed time), start and end times, message or description, and stack trace or exception details. In frameworks with test suites, a TestResult might also contain a collection of failure records or child results for nested tests. Some implementations distinguish between assertion failures and runtime errors.

TestResult objects are produced by test runners as tests execute, and are consumed to generate human-readable reports or machine-readable summaries. They are commonly aggregated at the suite or project level to show overall success rates, total duration, number of tests, failures, and skipped tests. Many frameworks support exporting results to formats such as XML, JSON, or JUnit-compatible reports for continuous integration systems.

Design considerations include how much metadata to attach (labels, categories, parameters), whether results are mutable or immutable after creation, and how to correlate results with test source code. In practice, TestResult serves as a lightweight, serializable representation of test execution outcomes used throughout development, testing, and deployment pipelines.