How to set a custom output ?

[jmrenouard]

Hello,

In the same order,
is it possible to define a custom output ?

For instance, DBI, YAML, JSON, TXT, INI could be good candidates ?

[krimdomu]

Currently there is the idea of having this. There is already an output format for JUnit. But this is not really consequently included.

This is a task for 2.0 release to have better options to format the output.

[jmrenouard]

Yes I see Junit.pm but produce a junit_output.xml in the current directory.
1° How using it in Rexfile ?

2° The better the output is, better will be adoption of the REX.
Nowaday, Rex is nasty outputting his result giving him a very bad impression of "unfinishness".
But AFAK, the architecture is quiet good and flexible.

3° My own example in Rexfile
For instance, I ran my last rexfile with -q option and pass my command to _run
sub run {
say "=" x 80;
say "Server : " . connection->server;
say "Output : ". join "\n\t", run @; # force scalar/string context
say "-" x 80;
};
The main issue about that is "COMPLEXITY" in Rexfile.

4° Choice a great default format for output (color, verbosity and format) whitch can give confidence in Rex.
Maybe, as great leader you are, you should just say what is an great standard output by default.
And then allow everyone to customize his output format.

5° Multiple outputs format idea.
use Rex::Output::Format::JSON;
use Rex::Output::Format::DBI;
use Rex::Output::Format::YAML;
use Rex::Output::Format::Template;
....

then in Rexfile:
default_output("Junit"); #or
default_output("JSON"); #or
default_output("DBI", "$dsn, ...,$sqlInsert); #And/Or

add_output("File", "JSON", "$filename");#And/Or
add_output(""TCP", "tcp://192.168.0.1");#And/Or
add_output("JSON", ....);
...
The ability to multiply output targets is great.

Do we need a "2.0" specific release to allow such feature to be present ?

Best regards;
Jean-Marie Renouard

[krimdomu]

Hi,

you can set the output format with rex -o JUnit for example.

The problem here is, that we need to know what we want to print to the screen.

Currently all functions are standalone. There is no central dispatcher that translates the "dsl" functions (like file() or mkdir()) into Resource-Objects and process the return value to generate the output.
Every function can print to the screen what it wants.

And you have the output from the user with print() or say().

To get a consistant feeling (even with functions that are not in the core but provided as a plugin by modules.rexify.org) we need to create an infrastructure that disables / suppres this individuality.

Right now we have a reporting facility. For 0.46 i have refactored this and with this we could generate such outputs. But this will only work for the core functions (due to the mentions problem [no central dispatcher]).

The timeline for a first usable 2.0 version is not as far away as one might think. But currently i don't want to make too much changes to the 0.x version, to make it more stable. Because i want to release 1.0 on 8th May.

1.0 will be a lts version. And right after this we will start working on 2.0 and consider all the things we have learned in the 3 years developing 0.x.

[krimdomu]

After the work in #437 is done, we will work on this.