unit-testing

C# – Use StringAssert when testing a string for substrings

by

When you’re testing if two strings are equal, you can simply use Assert.AreEqual(). When you’re testing if a string contains a substring or a pattern, typically developers use Assert.IsTrue() with a substring method or regex. You should use StringAssert instead, because it gives better failure messages. Note: StringAssert is nice because it’s a built-in class. … Read more

C# – Unit test an event handler

by

An event handler is a method that is registered to listen to an event. When the event is invoked, the event handler method is called. You may be tempted to directly call the event handler to unit test it. It’s better to actually raise the event though, and then check the side effects of the … Read more

C# – Using the DynamicData attribute in unit tests

by

The purpose of parameterized tests is to eliminate duplicated tests. There are two ways to pass parameters into a parameterized test: the DataRow attribute and the DynamicData attribute. With DataRow, the problem is you can only pass in constants and arrays. You can’t pass in reference types. When you try to pass in reference types, … Read more

C# – Merge two dictionaries in-place

by

When you merge two dictionaries, you can either merge them in-place, or create a new dictionary and copy the values over to it. The following extension method does an in-place merge of two dictionaries. It loops through items in the right dictionary, adding them to the left dictionary. When duplicate keys exist, it’s keeping the … Read more

C# – Hex string to byte array

by

This article shows code for converting a hex string to a byte array, unit tests, and a speed comparison. First, this diagram shows the algorithm for converting a hex string to a byte array. To convert a hex string to a byte array, you need to loop through the hex string and convert two characters … Read more

C# – How to copy an object

by

In this article I’ll explain how to copy an object. I’ll explain the difference between shallow and deep copying, and then show multiple ways to do both approaches for copying objects. At the end, I’ll show a performance and feature comparison to help you decide which object copying method to use. Shallow copy vs Deep … Read more

C# – How to unit test code that uses HttpClient

by

When you want to unit test code that uses HttpClient, you’ll want to treat HttpClient like any other dependency: pass it into the code (aka dependency injection) and then mock it out in the unit tests. There are two approaches to mocking it out: In this article I’ll show examples of these two approaches. Untested … Read more

C# – Can’t pass decimal parameter in DataTestMethod

by

I have a parameterized unit test with decimal parameters. When I run the test, I get the following exception: System.ArgumentException: Object of type ‘System.Double’ cannot be converted to type ‘System.Decimal’. Solution Change the parameters to doubles and convert them to decimals inside the test method. Why is it throwing an exception? You have to pass … Read more

C# – Parameterized tests with MSTest v2

by

There are two steps for parameterizing a unit test when using the MSTest v2 framework (built-in default): Here’s an example: Parameterized unit tests are useful because you only need one test method for multiple test cases instead of one test method per test case. It’s a simple way to declutter your unit tests and make … Read more

C# – How to test that your code can handle another culture’s date format

by

Let’s say you have code that converts a string to a DateTime with DateTime.Parse(): By default, DateTime.Parse() uses CultureInfo.CurrentCulture to figure out the date format. The current culture ultimately comes from your OS settings. So when you run this code on a computer that is using the en-US locale, the current culture will automatically default … Read more

Moq – Return different values with SetupSequence

by

When you’re mocking a method that’s called multiple times, you may want to change the behavior of the method each time it’s called. The way you do this with Moq is by using SetupSequence(), like this: Note: You can also make it throw an exception in the sequence. Example of code I want to test … Read more

C# – How to unit test async methods

by

Let’s say you have the following async method you want to test: Here’s how to unit test this: This is awaiting the method you’re testing. To await it, you must make the unit test method return async Task. This example is a bit simplistic. In the real world when you are working with async methods, … Read more

Refactoring the Switch Statement code smell

by

The Switch Statement code smell refers to using switch statements with a type code to get different behavior or data instead of using subclasses and polymorphism. In general, it looks like this: This switch(typeCode) structure is typically spread throughout many methods. This makes the code difficult to extend, and violates the Open-Closed Principle. This principle … Read more

How to mock static methods

by

The need to mock static methods in order to add a unit test is a very common problem. It’s often the case that these static methods are in third-party libraries. There are many utility libraries that are completely made up of static methods. While this makes them very easy to use, it makes them really … Read more