About

My preferred frameworks for automated testing in .NET.

See here for a list of included packages and their versions.

This package also includes the TestHarnessBase class, which aids my preferred technique for setup/teardown code. Generally, I eschew traditional SetUp and TearDown methods. Instead, in each test, I create an instance of a disposable context class. Construction is setup, and disposal is teardown. Because TestContext means something else already in NUnit, I call this pattern Test Harness instead.

[Test]
public void TestSomething()
{
    using var h = new TestHarness();

    // rest of test
}

private class TestHarness : TestHarnessBase
{
    // properties for mocks and things

    public TestHarness()
    {
        // setup code
    }

    protected override CleanUp()
    {
        // teardown code
    }
}

This pattern enables some cool things:

• I can enable the C# 8 nullability checker and not have to sprinkle ? and ! all over the test code.

• Tests can run in parallel, regardless of test fixture lifetime, since there is no longer any shared state within a test class.

• Test-support code can be isolated away from the tests themselves.

If the test fixture lifetime is instance-per-test-case, the test fixture itself can be a subclass of TestHarnessBase. This results in a test fixture more closely resembling a traditional one and removes the need for a using statement in each test, while retaining the improved nullability ergonomics. However, directly subclassing TestHarnessBase forfeits the isolation afforded by having a separate test harness class.

[TestFixture]
[FixtureLifeCycle(LifeCycle.InstancePerTestCase)]
public class SomeTests : TestHarnessBase
{
    // properties for mocks and things

    public TestHarness()
    {
        // setup code
    }

    protected override CleanUp()
    {
        // teardown code
    }

    [Test]
    public void TestSomething()
    {
        // test
    }
}