In my past articles, I’ve written about using custom listeners as part of getting the desired reporting or making your tests do what you want. I’ve always referred offhandedly to these listeners, never paying them direct attention. I figured it was finally time to actually write a full-fledged post about listeners and some useful tricks.
What Is a Listener?
Most testing frameworks (JUnit, TestNG, Cucumber, Robot…) have what they call a ‘listener.’ This is a class with methods that runs before or after your tests and has hooks into reporting and logging. It works within the framework to identify what passes, what fails, and maybe even why. Sometimes, these also include how and when tests are executed. Understanding how these listeners work can add additional insight into how your tests run. Understanding how these listeners can be modified can allow you greater control over your tests.