Test2::Formatter(3)	Perl Programmers Reference Guide     Test2::Formatter(3)

NAME
     Test2::Formatter - Namespace for formatters.

DESCRIPTION
     This is the namespace for formatters. This is an empty package.

CREATING FORMATTERS
     A formatter is any package or object with a "write($event, $num)" method.

	 package Test2::Formatter::Foo;
	 use strict;
	 use warnings;

	 sub write {
	     my $self_or_class = shift;
	     my ($event, $assert_num) = @_;
	     ...
	 }

	 sub hide_buffered { 1 }

	 sub terminate { }

	 sub finalize { }

	 sub supports_tables { return $BOOL }

	 sub new_root {
	     my $class = shift;
	     ...
	     $class->new(@_);
	 }

	 1;

     The "write" method is a method, so it either gets a class or instance. The
     two arguments are the $event object it should record, and the $assert_num
     which is the number of the current assertion (ok), or the last assertion if
     this event is not itself an assertion. The assertion number may be any in-
     teger 0 or greater, and may be undefined in some cases.

     The hide_buffered() method must return a boolean. This is used to tell
     buffered subtests whether or not to send it events as they are being
     buffered.	See "run_subtest(...)" in Test2::API for more information.

     The "terminate" and "finalize" methods are optional methods called that you
     can implement if the format you're generating needs to handle these cases,
     for example if you are generating XML and need close open tags.

     The "terminate" method is called when an event's "terminate" method returns
     true, for example when a Test2::Event::Plan has a 'skip_all' plan, or when
     a Test2::Event::Bail event is sent. The "terminate" method is passed a sin-
     gle argument, the Test2::Event object which triggered the terminate.

     The "finalize" method is always the last thing called on the formatter, ex-
     cept when "terminate" is called for a Bail event. It is passed the follow-
     ing arguments:

     The "supports_tables" method should be true if the formatter supports di-
     rectly rendering table data from the "info" facets. This is a newer feature
     and many older formatters may not support it. When not supported the for-
     matter falls back to rendering "detail" instead of the "table" data.

     The "new_root" method is used when constructing a root formatter. The de-
     fault is to just delegate to the regular new() method, most formatters can
     ignore this.

     *	 The number of tests that were planned

     *	 The number of tests actually seen

     *	 The number of tests which failed

     *	 A boolean indicating whether or not the test suite passed

     *	 A boolean indicating whether or not this call is for a subtest

     The "new_root" method is called when "Test2::API::Stack" Initializes the
     root hub for the first time. Most formatters will simply have this call
     "$class->new", which is the default behavior. Some formatters however may
     want to take extra action during construction of the root formatter, this
     is where they can do that.

SOURCE
     The source code repository for Test2 can be found at
     <https://github.com/Test-More/test-more/>.

MAINTAINERS
     Chad Granum <exodist@cpan.org>

AUTHORS
     Chad Granum <exodist@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT
     Copyright Chad Granum <exodist@cpan.org>.

     This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it un-
     der the same terms as Perl itself.

     See <https://dev.perl.org/licenses/>

perl v5.44.0			   2026-06-22		     Test2::Formatter(3)