xUnit.net Unit Test Framework

Over the years, many tools have been developed to make unit testing easier. 0:00 A unit test is simply a method that executes the code under test and 0:05 checks to see if it got the expected results. 0:08 We could do this right from the main method of a console application. 0:11 However, after writing many unit tests, 0:15 you'd start to see a pattern in how these tests are set up and run. 0:17 You'd eventually create a framework that all of your unit tests can use. 0:20 Fortunately, there are many such frameworks already available for .NET. 0:25 There are three main frameworks. 0:29 MSTest which is also known as the Visual Studio Unit Testing Framework, 0:31 NUnit and xUnit.net. 0:36 All three of these frameworks are based off of one of the first 0:40 popular unit testing frameworks for Java called jUnit. 0:44 They all work relatively the same, though. 0:48 Together these frameworks and 0:50 others like them are referred to as the xUnit family of unit test frameworks. 0:52 Of these three frameworks for .NET, xUnit.net is the most popular and 0:57 the one that has the most active development. 1:02 It's also the one we'll be using in this course. 1:05 You may work on projects that use one of the other frameworks and that's okay. 1:08 Everything you'll learn in this course can be applied 1:13 to any of this family of unit testing frameworks. 1:15 That said you'll often hear me refer xUnit.net as just xUnit. 1:18 Just know that I'm only referring to xUnit.net and 1:24 not the family of frameworks as a whole. 1:27 One great thing about unit testing frameworks is that they often work 1:30 well with IDEs such as Visual Studio, which means we can execute, 1:33 debug, and get the results of our unit test without leaving the IDE. 1:38 To do that, we'll want to install an extension to Visual Studio. 1:42 The Outercurve Foundation, 1:46 which is one of the open source companies supported by Microsoft, 1:49 has made using xUnit.net really easy by creating an extension to Visual Studio. 1:52 This extension helps with generating test projects that come complete with 1:58 everything we need to create and run tests. 2:01 To install it, just click Tools, Extensions and Updates. 2:04 Now over here click on Online. 2:10 Over in the search box, just type in xunit. 2:13 Here we see a number of extensions and templates that have to do with xUnit. 2:18 The one we want is called xUnit.net Test Extensions. 2:22 It's created by Outercurve Foundation. 2:27 I just click Download here to install it. 2:30 You may have to click the Restart Now button to restart Visual Studio to enjoy 2:35 this extension. 2:38 There we go, that's all we need to do. 2:41 We'll take a closer look at what this extension does for us in the next video. 2:43