Is there an API for running Visual Studio Unit Tests programmatically?
Running MSTests.exe with Process.Start() does not work in the current scenario. What I'm looking for is something like the NUnit SimpleTestRunner.
Any ideas?
/Erik
You're correct in that there's no public API for the mstest framework. I wrote a manual replacement for mstest one day to see how hard it was, and it's not as simple as it looks (particularly if you want to take advantage of more than one CPU core), so beware of going down this path.
Personally I've always just run mstest.exe programatically and then parsed the resulting .trx XML file. Are there any particular reasons why you can't use Process.Start to run it?
P.S. Some of the strange behaviour of mstest.exe are solved if you pass the /noisolation command line parameter - give that a go if you feel so inclined :-)
Update: Erik mentions he wants to run the test API in the current thread so he can set the thread culture for globalization issues.
If you run a unit test under the debugger, you'll notice that mstest creates a bunch of threads, and runs all your tests in different threads, so this isn't likely to work even if you could access the API.
What I'd suggest doing is this:
From your test "runner" application, set an environment variable
Run mstest pointing it at the specific tests
Add a [ClassInitialize] (or [TestInitialize]) method which reads this environment variable and sets the culture
Profit!
After taking a deep dive with reflector into MSTest.exe and further down into the Visual Studio Unit Test stack, I found that the API used by MSTest is sealed up and made private so that i cannot be used from the outside.
Why not using Reflector and seeing how NUnit SimpleTestRunner is running the tests... And then use this technique...
You can make use of the Microsoft REST API's for TFS to run ms tests. Please refer to the documentation here.
I've linked to "Call a Rest API" so that you can see how you'd go about calling one of the REST API's for TFS.
Note that if your tests are linked to the build, they should run automatically every time a build is queued.
Here is the link to Run Functional Tests.
I've also discovered an article on using the TFS SDK API to run tests. Here is that link as well: Link to API Article
Related
Here's the background:
I've wrote my tests in protractor#visual studio and got it running successfully with the help of this guide;
Checked the project into TFS;
Now, my intention is to associate my protractor tests to microsoft case tests, then i intent to run against a environment (SCVMM).
I tried Coded Ui Test, but i found then a little bit slow.
Is there a way that i can get this done?
Thanks.
What I did was use Generic Tests to accomplish this.
Each Generic Test you create can represent a Protractor test. I just named them similarly. Then you can link the Generic Test to the MTM test. Simple as that.
I took it a step further and set the Generic Test up in such a way that it runs the Protractor test. This is really nice because Visual studio will recognize these tests in Test Explorer. So no more command prompt :)
Here's an example of one of mine:
Is it possible to automatically run unit tests while you work without compiling or running them manually? I am aware that NDepend allows you to do so, but I would prefer to use the ReSharper suite.
This has been available since dotCover 10. See the dotCover documentation for details.
This adds a new panel "Continuous Testing Session" as well as a new status icon in the gutter.
Note that Visual Studio also has this feature, known as Live Unit Testing.
Not possible with Resharper at the moment, you will need something like NCrunch that runs your unit tests continuously in the background, highlighting code that breaks them as you write it and fails your tests.
Edit: At the time of my response it wasn't possible to do this with ReSharper but now in Version 10 it is, see Drew Noakes's answer. You could still give NCrunch a try as it continuously runs your tests in the background even without doing an explicit save.
I created a console application that was designed to be completely self-reliant and contain all the necessary DLLs to run. I was able to do this and get it to run locally, but when copying to another computer I began to receive this message...
"No test discoverer is registered to perform discovery of test cases. Register a test discoverer and try again."
I found this Microsoft bug report, but it was closed as could not reproduce:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/770093/unit-test-project-not-discovering-test-cases
I didn't want to sit around waiting for Microsoft to say they couldn't reproduce so I dug into it and found that the reason I was getting this error message is because I was missing the DLL file "Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework.dll".
This is the file that contains the test discoverer and it needs to be in directory of the executable that is running the tests as well as the directory of the test files themselves. It is easy to miss because the assemblies to run the tests appear to be completely contained within the "Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestPlatform" namespace and the tests appear to only require a reference to "Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting".
I decided to post this "knowledge share" post because there was no other information about the issue on the internet and Microsoft's documentation of their MSTest framework is bad at best.
Just come across this issue with some unit tests originally written in .Net 3.5 and running (or not) in vs 2013.
The UnitTestFramework.dll mentioned by Love2Learn was present however updating to .Net 4.5 seems to resolve the problem.
I'm sure someone out there can explain why but my gut feeling is that this has something to do with this being a multi-platform solution and that .Net 4.5 is just better at running 32bit unit tests against 64bit projects.
While writing my tests this week for a new project, I encountered the TestContext property using the Microsoft Unit Testing Framework available with Visual Studio Team System.
I was wondering:
1. How this property could be used concretely?
2. In other words, what is its purpose?
3. Anyone has a concrete example to provide to ease my understanding?
I have written many tests so far in my career, and have never ever found a use for this particular property.
Any clue anyone?
Thanks in advance! =)
This property can be used to run parametrized tests, like if you have constants you don't want to hardcode in your test project that you want to load and share among all the tests. By default it will be populated with useful information, like the path where your test is running.
Then it is one of the key to run the same test several times with different values. The MSTest framework can be used to link your test project to a database or a csv file and run the tests once for all the rows in the said DB. This is called data driven testing and you'll find many sample on the net. Here is one how to.
I'm currently using MSTest in VS2008 for unit tests, but I am looking at going to xUnit.net.
Question - What would be the easiest way to get my unit tests running continually locally (on my PC) and with some sort of visual alert of pass / # of fails.
i.e. similar to what we do in Ruby on Rails with autospec.
THanks
PS Intersested in hearing of the simplest open source option too.
You should also ask this on http://xunit.codeplex.com/Thread/List.aspx
There's an xUnit GUI runner and it has an auto-reload when DLLs get touched.
The missing bit is the auto-rerun of the last of executed tests when that happens. The minute we have that, you're just a Shift F6 (compile current project) away from waht you want.
The xunit.net guys are normally quite responsive, and avote on [my] http://xunit.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=8832 would help.
Regarding your other comment - I really believe xUnit.net is worth your effort using. You won't look back.
Resharper's test runner runs within VS, can run just a single test or a whole suite, and appears to support xUnit with a plugin.