---
title: tap Reporting Results
eleventyNavigation:
  key: Reporting Results
  parent: Docs
  order: 40
---

While [TAP](./tap-format.md) is intended to be both machine
parseable and human intelligible, and the raw TAP content is
often a good way to see exactly what is happening with a test, it
tends to be quite a bit too noisy for regular ergonomic human
consumption.

For this reason, tap comes with an
[ink](https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink)-based reporter system,
and additional reporters can be added as well.

You can specify the reporter to use with the `--reporter` config
option. Custom reporters can be an Ink-based React component, a
Stream class, or a CLI program.

## Included Reporters

The `base` reporter is the one that tap uses by default. It
shows information about tests as they are running in parallel,
and aims to be verbose enough to show you what's going on,
without showing more information that is useful.

If the `base` reporter is too noisy for your liking, you can use
the `terse` reporter, which is similar, but prints much less
information, or `min` or `dot` which are even terser, or `silent`
which is as terse as it gets.

If the base report is not noisy _enough_, try running with
`--passes` to show all passing assertions, or `-R tap` to print
out the raw [TAP data](./tap-format.md). If that's still not
enough, you can run with `--debug` to see all the inner workings
of tap's machinery. (This is really only good for debugging tap
itself.)

All the reporters are designed to be as accessible as possible,
featuring diff and syntax highlighting color choices that are
amenable to any level of color sensitivity.

 PASS  docs/foo.test.js 2 OK 392ms

  🌈   TEST COMPLETE 🌈    

Asserts:  2 pass  0 fail  2 of 2 complete
Suites:   1 pass  0 fail  1 of 1 complete

# { total: 2, pass: 2 }
# time=426.889ms

An example with a bit more going on:

 FAIL  test/tap.test.js 3 failed 6 todo 6 skip of 30 325ms
 ~ a test that is entirely skipped
 ~ skipped with a message
 ~ stringOrNull > a failure skipped
 ~ stringOrNull > a pass skipped
 ~ stringOrNull > a failure skipped with message message
 ~ stringOrNull > a pass skipped with message message
 ☐ a test marked todo
 ☐ todo with a message
 ☐ stringOrNull > a failure marked todo
 ☐ stringOrNull > a pass marked todo
 ☐ stringOrNull > todo failure with message message
 ☐ stringOrNull > todo pass with message message
 ✖   suite of tests that fail > uhoh, this one throws > Invalid time value lib/index.mjs:11:43
 ✖   suite of tests that fail > failer > should be equal test/tap.test.js:51:7
 ✖   suite of tests that fail > failer > should be equal test/tap.test.js:53:7

-----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
File       | % Stmts | % Branch | % Funcs | % Lines | Uncovered Line #s
-----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
All files  |   89.47 |      100 |      80 |   89.47 |                  
 index.mjs |   89.47 |      100 |      80 |   89.47 | 18-19            
-----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------

  🌈   TEST COMPLETE 🌈    

 FAIL  test/tap.test.js 3 failed 6 todo 6 skip of 30 325ms
 ~ a test that is entirely skipped
 ~ skipped with a message
 ~ stringOrNull > a failure skipped
 ~ stringOrNull > a pass skipped
 ~ stringOrNull > a failure skipped with message message
 ~ stringOrNull > a pass skipped with message message
 ☐ a test marked todo
 ☐ todo with a message
 ☐ stringOrNull > a failure marked todo
 ☐ stringOrNull > a pass marked todo
 ☐ stringOrNull > todo failure with message message
 ☐ stringOrNull > todo pass with message message

 ✖   suite of tests that fail > uhoh, this one throws > Invalid time value
    lib/index.mjs                                                
     8                                                           
     9 // This is a function that throws, to show how both       
    10 // handle errors.                                         
    11 export const thrower = (n) => new Date(n).toISOString()   
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛               
    12                                                           
    13 // one that fails, to show how failures are handled       
    14 export const failer = (n) => String(n + 1)                
    15                                                           
    type: RangeError
    tapCaught: testFunctionThrow
    Date.toISOString (<anonymous>)
    thrower (lib/index.mjs:11:43)
    Test.<anonymous> (test/tap.test.js:43:13)

 ✖   suite of tests that fail > failer > should be equal
    test/tap.test.js                                                        
    48     t.equal(failer(1), '2')                                          
    49     t.equal(failer(-1), '0')                                         
    50     // expect to convert string numbers to Number, but doesn't       
    51     t.equal(failer('1'), '2')                                        
    ━━━━━━━━━┛                                                              
    52     // expect to convert non-numerics to 0, but it doesn't           
    53     t.equal(failer({}), '1')                                         
    54     t.end()                                                          
    55   })                                                                 
    --- expected   
    +++ actual     
    @@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
    -2             
    +11            
    compare: ===
    Test.<anonymous> (test/tap.test.js:51:7)
    Test.<anonymous> (test/tap.test.js:47:5)
    test/tap.test.js:39:3

 ✖   suite of tests that fail > failer > should be equal
    test/tap.test.js                                                        
    50     // expect to convert string numbers to Number, but doesn't       
    51     t.equal(failer('1'), '2')                                        
    52     // expect to convert non-numerics to 0, but it doesn't           
    53     t.equal(failer({}), '1')                                         
    ━━━━━━━━━┛                                                              
    54     t.end()                                                          
    55   })                                                                 
    56                                                                      
    57   t.end()                                                            
    --- expected     
    +++ actual       
    @@ -1,1 +1,1 @@  
    -1               
    +[object Object]1
    compare: ===
    Test.<anonymous> (test/tap.test.js:53:7)
    Test.<anonymous> (test/tap.test.js:47:5)
    test/tap.test.js:39:3

Asserts:  15 pass  3 fail  6 skip  6 todo  18 of 30 complete
Suites:    0 pass  1 fail  0 skip            1 of 1 complete

# { total: 30, pass: 15, fail: 3, todo: 6, skip: 6 }
# time=437.285ms

The included reporters are:

- `base` - Shown above. A moderate level of reporting, clear
  indicators of where the test summary is starting, and live
  updates as tests are run and completed.
- `terse` - Much less extraneous decorative output. It shows the
  `Asserts` and `Suites` summary, but no live-updating indicators
  of which tests are running and how long they take.
- `min` - Even more terse than terse. Nothing at all is printed
  unless a failure occurs.
- `silent` - Literally as terse as it is possible to be, no
  output at all.
- `dot` - Similar to `min`, but prints a dot for each assertion,
  colored appropriately for its pass/fail/skip/todo status.
  (Or, if colors are disabled, just a regular dot.)
- `junit` - JUnit style XML results.
- `json` - Output the results of the test run as a single JSON
  object.
- `jsonstream` - Line-delmited JSON, printing an array message
  for each suite and assertion.
- `markdown` - Similar to `jsonstream`, but markdown instead of
  JSON.
- `tap` - Just the raw TAP stream.

Those are just the built-in reports. You can [write your own
using the `@tapjs/reporter` library](./writing-custom-reporters.md).

## Reporting to a File

Particularly for the JSON, XML, or Markdown reporters, it can be
useful to pipe to a file.

To do this, you can set the `--reporter-file` option (shorthand:
`-f`) to a path on disk.  For example:

```bash
$ # write the xml to rspec.xml
$ tap -R junit --reporter-file rspec.xml
```

You can also use the `replay` command in this case to output a
human-friendly report only on test failure:

```bash
$ # will create xml file, only print verbose report on failure
$ tap -R junit --reporter-file rspec.xml || tap replay
```

## Ink-Based Reporters

To use a custom reporter written in Ink, set the `--reporter`
config option to the module which default-exports a React tag
taking a [`TAP`](./api.md#class-tap) object as the `tap`
attribute, and a
[`LoadedConfig`](https://tapjs.github.io/tapjs/interfaces/_tapjs_config.index.LoadedConfig.html)
object as the `config` attribute.

## Stream-Based Reporters

Alternatively, you can set `--reporter` to a module that
default-exports a Writable Stream class. (That is, a class
with `write` and `end` methods on its prototype.)

In this case, the class will be instantiated with no arguments,
and the root `TAP` test will be piped into it.

## CLI-Based Reporters

Lastly, you can provide a name of an executable program, which
will receive the TAP content on its standard input.

In this case, the `--reporter-arg` config options may be used to
set the arguments to the reporter program.

For example,

$ npm install --save-dev tap-mocha-reporter
$ tap --color -R tap-mocha-reporter -r nyan
 871 _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-__,------,
 0   _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-__|  /\_/\  
 0   _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_~|_( ^ .^)  
     _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ ""  ""  

  871 passing (2s)
