Unit Testing show output

Question

I searched for unit testing tool and I found the suitable one is NUnit and I think it good but my problem that this tool only show test method result only (pass or fail) and I need to show not only pass or fail also the output .How can I show the output using NUnit or if there another unit testing tool its also good ?If its not supported please suggest me how can I solve it.

All ideas are welcomed

Answer 1

Piping the output of System.Console will work for NUnit, but it's not your best option.

For passing tests, you shouldn't need to review the console output to verify that the tests have passed. If you are, you're doing it wrong. Tests should be automated and repeatable without human intervention. Verifying by hand doesn't scale and creates false positives.

On the other hand, having console output for failing tests is helpful, but it will only provide information that could otherwise be inferred from attaching a debugger. That's a lot of extra effort to add console logging to your application for little benefit.

Instead, make sure that your error messages are meaningful. When writing your tests make sure your assertions are explicit. Always try to use the assertion that closely fits the object you are asserting and provide a failure message that explains why the test is important.

For example:

// very bad
Assert.IsTrue( collection.Count == 23 );

The above assertion doesn't really provide much help when the test fails. As NUnit formats the output of the assertions, this assertion won't help you as it will state something like "expecting <True> but was <False>".

A more appropriate assert will provide more meaningful test failures.

// much better
Assert.AreEqual(23, collection.Count, 
               "There should be a minimum of 23 items by default.");

This provides a much more meaningful failure message: "Expecting <23> but was <0>: There should be a minimum of 23 items by default."

Answer 2

On the bottom bar of NUnit you can click Text Output and that shows all debug and console output.