Parser Template Syntax

Owned by Kevin Pham (Deactivated)
Last updated: Oct 10, 2024 by Dominik Trygar
6 min read

Starting October 11, 2024 (Zephyr Enterprise 8.2), the Zephyr Enterprise documentation moved from its current location on Atlassian to a dedicated, standalone Zephyr Enterprise documentation page. Please see: https://support.smartbear.com/zephyr-enterprise/docs/en/zephyr-enterprise/zephyr-user-guide/zephyr-test-automation/parser-templates/parser-template-syntax.html

A parser template is a JSON structure:

Its fields specify the properties of a test execution item that Zephyr will create for a test run:

Field 

Description 

status 

A string that specifies the test status. Can be an arbitrary string. Typical values are Passed, OK, Failed, Failure, and so on. For more information, on how Zephyr checks if a test failed or not, see below. 

statusExistPass 

An additional indicator of the test status. Can be true or false. For more information, on how Zephyr treats this field value, see below. 

statusString 

An expected value for the status field. Zephyr users this field to check if a test failed or not. See below. 

statusFailAttachment 

An additional description of test results used when a test failed. Typically, has an extended error message or a call stack for a failed function. Zephyr saves this extended description to a file and then attaches this file to an automation item: 

statusPassAttachment 

An additional description of test results used when a test passed. Typically, has information on the test case name and execution time. Zephyr saves this extended description to a file and then attaches this file to an automation item. See the image above. 

packageName 

This property is used only if you commanded Zephyr to create a package-like hierarchy of test execution items. The property specifies the name of the last level in the hierarchy. 

testcase
    name 

The name of the executed test case. Will be displayed in the Name column of the Test Execution screen in Zephyr. 

tag

A string of tags set for the test in the test results file. Zephyr pulls these values, parses and adds them to your test case. You will see them in the Tags attribute of the test case.

Test results can have one or multiple tags:

  • One tag:

<testcase> ... <tag>sample1</tag> ... </testcase>

  • Multiple tags:

<testcase> ... <tags> <tag>sample1</tag> <tag>sample2</tag> </tags> ... </testcase>

Depending on the format of test results, you use different patterns to parse the tag values:

Sample contents of the results .xml file:

<testsuite>
<testcase>
...
<tag>sample1</tag>
...
</testcase>
</testsuite>

Parser template (as you can see, it is similar to patterns used for other elements):

tag: "${testsuite.testcase.tag}"

Sample contents of the results .xml file:
<testsuite>
<testcase>
...
<tags>
<tag>sample1</tag>
<tag>sample2</tag>
</tags>
...
</testcase>
</testsuite>

You need to combine the tags/tag values into a single string to assign it to the tag item. To do this, you use the group_concat(…) function. It has the following parameters:

group_concat(path.to.parent.element, child-element, 'separator')

For example:

tag: ${group_concat(testsuite.testcase.tags, tag, ' ')}

The pattern above will extract tags/tag values, concatenate them into a single string and use spaces as a separator. A Zephyr test case will get the following Tags attribute: sample1 sample2.

The default parser template has a tag pattern for parsing tags from Cucumber test results. If you use another framework or tool to run your tests, please change the template accordingly.

The Tags attribute of a Zephyr test case is limited to 4,000 characters.

skipTestcaseNames 

An XML file can have information on one or multiple test cases. By default, Zephyr will create a test execution item for every test case it finds in the XML file. 

This field is a string of test case names that which Zephyr will skip and for which it will not create a test run item. 

The names are case-sensitive. Separate multiple test case names with a comma. Don’t put extra spaces around test case names. 

requirements
    id 

An array of requirement IDs or alternative IDs with which a test run is linked. IDs should start with the ID_ prefix, for example, ID_17 or ID_74. Alternative IDs start with the AltID_ prefix, for instance, AltID_MYPROJ-234 or AltID_simpleTest.  Often, alternative IDs are used to indicate the Jira ticket to which a requirement relates, so the AltID_ string includes the project name and ID of that Jira ticket.

attachments
    filePath 

An array that specifies additional files to be attached to the item. You should specify the path in terms of the computer, where the test ran. The path can be relative or absolute. If you use a relative file name, then it should be relative to the folder, where the test result XML file is located. 

strict

Affects XML node matching with $-expressions. If strict is true, ${A.B.C} will search for the specified nodes only within direct children of a parent node. If strict is false (the default value), all $-expressions in the template work recursively, that is, ${A.B.C} will find B nodes on any level inside A, and find C nodes on any level inside B nodes. Depending on the XML file structure, non-strict templates may cause creation of extra test cases, which may or may not be desired. See the example below.

How Zephyr determines if a test failed or passed 

Zephyr uses the following field values to determine the overall test result: 

  • status 

  • statusExistPass 

  • statusString 

The status field indicates the test results briefly. It might have or have no contents (for instance, the expression you use can refer to a non-existing element in the resulting XML file, or this expression can return an empty string). The other two fields specify how Zephyr treats the status value. 

If statusString is null … 

 

status has contents 

status has no content 

statusExistPass: true 

Test passed 

Test failed 

statusExistPass: false 

Test failed 

Test passed 

If statusString is some string … 

Zephyr uses statusString as an expected value for status: 

  • If status is not equal to statusString, then Zephyr considers the test failed. 

  • If status is equal to statusString, then Zephyr checks the statusExistPass property: 
    - If it is true, the test passed. 
    - If is false, the test failed. 

Examples 

Example 1. Custom test case name 

Suppose you want the test execution item’s name to include both the test suite name and the test case name. In this case, you can use an expression like this (the “-” symbol will be a separator in the resulting name): 

… "testcase": { "name": "${testsuite:name}-testsuite.testcase:name" } … 

Example 2. Include additional data 

You may want to retrieve extra properties from the XML file and store them with a test execution item. To do this, specify their names in the statusFailAttachment or statusPassAttachment property. For example: 

Example 3. Handle Error and Fail tags

If you want Zephyr to set the test status to Fail when the Error and Failure tabs are used, you need to create a parser template that will do that. To do that, use the following custom template, send the following API request to your Zephyr server: 

POST http://{your-zephyr}/flex/services/rest/latest/parsertemplate 

Here, your-zephyr is the IP address or host name of your Zephyr server.

Use the following payload for this request:

Example 4. Using the “strict” option

Suppose a test case's child nodes include status nodes. You can force the parser to ignore them and thus avoid creating individual test cases for such status nodes while parsing test results. To do that, set the new strict option to true in your parser template: "strict": true.  If you use the default value (false), a new test case will be created for each level status node.

Example 5. Handel the tag <failure type=””

You may have to create a custom template of the Junit when a Junit xml have <failure type="" /> instead of <failure message="" />. For example: 

For information on creating parser templates, see Create Parser Templates.

More examples 

To get an idea of how to perform this or that action, explore the preconfigured templates that comes along with Zephyr. See how you can get them. 

See Also

Parser Templates

Create, Edit, and Delete Parser Templates