is NUnit bad choice for Selenium test?

Question

I have read umpteen answers on SO while searching for NUnit + dependent methods + order of test execution. Every single answer suggests that forcing any set of order for unit tests is extremely evil.

I am writing Selenium tests using NUnit. So I am trying to write integration tests using Unit testing framework!!!

To cite an example of integration tests (and this is just one example). I need to create a valid account before proceeding with other tests. If creation of account fails then I would like to abort entire test execution.

Since I don't want to rely on alphabetic order of test and in true spirit of NUnit, decided to create an account before any further test. Though it does not look right to me for two core reasons -

1. Unnecessary code duplication/execution
2. What if application account creation is not working, all my tests would still try to create and account again and again and failing

I am inclined to think that NUnit may be not be right deal with Selenium tests. But if not Nunit then what should I use?

Answer 1

Selenium Core itself comes with a TestRunner that is written in Javascript and you can run your tests directly from the browser.

For more see:

http://www.developerfusion.com/article/84484/light-up-your-development-with-selenium-tests/

Apart from that, using Nunit and tests written in C# are much more easier to write and maintain. Are you using SetUp and TearDown while writing your tests? That way you can avoid code duplication.

Regarding you second point, you can have a flag that is set on first setup failure and skips the setup the next time or the setup itself tracking it and quickly failing the next time. And tests don't run if setup fails in Nunit.

Answer 2

I run Selenium with NUnit all the time. It just depends on how you write your tests. To avoid code duplication, I make a library of helper functions that do common things, like log in or log out of my site, that the other tests use to get to the page they need to test. (I use the term 'library' in a loose sense; I don't actually split them into their own C# project.)

You are right that if the account creation function is broken, the other tests will fail. But personally, I don't see that as a problem, as the point of unit tests is to make sure that your changes didn't have unintended effects elsewhere in your project. If the account creation broke, clearly that affects a lot of things. Ditto if my login helper method fails: if you can't log in, you can't get to anything in the site. Effectively, the whole site is broken.

Answer 3

If you need to create new accounts on each test then the approach that I would take is to have that code moved into your SetUp code. If some of your tests don't require login, split them out into different files.

Any bits of duplcation should be removed, test code should be as clean and robust as production code. Splitting the files with different tests help maintain the idea of Single Responsibility.