NAME

       App::Cmd::Tester - for capturing the result of running an app

VERSION

       version 0.336

SYNOPSIS

         use Test::More tests => 4;
         use App::Cmd::Tester;

         use YourApp;

         my $result = test_app(YourApp => [ qw(command --opt value) ]);

         like($result->stdout, qr/expected output/, 'printed what we expected');

         is($result->stderr, '', 'nothing sent to sderr');

         is($result->error, undef, 'threw no exceptions');

         my $result = test_app(YourApp => [ qw(command --opt value --quiet) ]);

         is($result->output, '', 'absolutely no output with --quiet');

DESCRIPTION

       One of the reasons that user-executed programs are so often poorly tested is that they are
       hard to test.  App::Cmd::Tester is one of the tools App-Cmd provides to help make it easy
       to test App::Cmd-based programs.

       It provides one routine: test_app.

PERL VERSION

       This library should run on perls released even a long time ago.  It should work on any
       version of perl released in the last five years.

       Although it may work on older versions of perl, no guarantee is made that the minimum
       required version will not be increased.  The version may be increased for any reason, and
       there is no promise that patches will be accepted to lower the minimum required perl.

METHODS

   test_app
       Note: while "test_app" is a method, it is by default exported as a subroutine into the
       namespace that uses App::Cmd::Tester.  In other words: you probably don't need to think
       about this as a method unless you want to subclass App::Cmd::Tester.

         my $result = test_app($app_class => \@argv_contents);

       This will locally set @ARGV to simulate command line arguments, and will then call the
       "run" method on the given application class (or application).  Output to the standard
       output and standard error filehandles  will be captured.

       $result is an App::Cmd::Tester::Result object, which has methods to access the following
       data:

         stdout - the output sent to stdout
         stderr - the output sent to stderr
         output - the combined output of stdout and stderr
         error  - the exception thrown by running the application, or undef
         run_rv - the return value of the run method (generally irrelevant)
         exit_code - the numeric exit code that would've been issued (0 is 'okay')

       The output is captured using IO::TieCombine, which can ensure that the ordering is
       preserved in the combined output, but can't capture the output of external programs.  You
       can reverse these tradeoffs by using App::Cmd::Tester::CaptureExternal instead.

AUTHOR

       Ricardo Signes <cpan@semiotic.systems>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       This software is copyright (c) 2023 by Ricardo Signes.

       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
       the Perl 5 programming language system itself.