How to write an NUnit Addin

Posted on January 23, 2012 by

From version 2.2.x NUnit supports AddIns. Addins can customize NUnit’s internal behavior such as the creation of tests and their execution. An Addin should to implement the interface NUnit.Core.Extensibility.IAddin, which can be found in the assembly nunit.core.interfaces. Also the NUnit.Core.Extensibility.NUnitAddinAttribute must be applied to Addin class. The attribute parameters Name and Description represent the name of the extension and a description of what it does. The NUnit.Core.Extensibility.IAddin has only one method, Install(). The Install method is called by each host for which the addin has specified an ExtensionType. The addin should check that the necessary extension points are available and install itself, returning true for success or false for failure to install. The method will be called once for each extension host and – for Core extensions – each time a new test domain is loaded. Here is a minimal addin.

namespace SampleAddIn
{
    using NUnit.Core.Extensibility;

    [NUnitAddin(Name = "SampleAddIn", Description = "This is a Sample AddIn")]
    public class SampleNUnitAddin : IAddin
    {
        #region IAddin Members

        public bool Install(IExtensionHost host)
        {
            return true;
        }

        #endregion
    }
}

You can install the Addin, by copying the assembly to bin\Addins folder, relative to NUnit installation directory. You can verify your addin by starting NUnit, Tools > Addins menu.

Registered AddIns Dialog

Registered AddIns Dialog

This Addin does nothing. It simply registers itself to NUnit. You can more details about NUnit Addins here
If you are using VS2010, then please make sure your target framework is .Net 2.0. Otherwise Addin won’t work.

Posted in .Net, Miscellaneous, Unit Testing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

How to add MEX endpoints programmatically

Posted on January 22, 2012 by

The Metadata Exchange Endpoint (MEX) is a special endpoint in WCF that exposes metadata used to describe a service.Without the MEX, you will not be able to use svcutil.exe to automatically generate a proxy class. Fortunately, it is a simply process to enable the MEX for your service. Here is the code which will add Mex endpoint programmatically. 

var metadataBehavior = serviceHost.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceMetadataBehavior>()
    ?? new ServiceMetadataBehavior();
serviceHost.Description.Behaviors.Add(metadataBehavior);
serviceHost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IMetadataExchange),
    MetadataExchangeBindings.CreateMexHttpBinding(),
    "http://localhost:8080/IService/Mex");

It should be noted that you are not required to enable HttpGet. SvcUtil will still be able to access the MEX without it. However, it is useful if you want to view the WSDL from a browser by going to the address of the service. You cannot do so without enabling the HttpGet.

Posted in .Net, .Net 4.0, WCF | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to execute ms tests in parallel on multi-cpu / core machines

Posted on January 18, 2012 by

VS 2010 supports running MS Tests in parallel. Most of the machines available in the market are multi-cpu / core machines. This will help us to increase the number of tests executing in same time, which will reduce total test time. But while writing tests, developers should make sure the tests are thread safe, if it is not, it may result in incorrect results, deadlocks etc.

You can enable parallel test execution by editing the testsettings file, instead of double click and open the test settings dialog, open the file using Open with option in the context menu, and select XML(Text) Editor option, which open the testsettings file in XML Editor. In the XML, find the Execution element. Add parallelTestCount attribute to the Execution element(By default it will not be there).

Parallel Test count attribute in testsettings file

Parallel Test count attribute in testsettings file

By default it will be 1(if the attribute is not exists), other options are 0 for Auto configure we will use as many tests as we can based on your CPU and core count, and n, the number n of tests to run in parallel. Save the changes. Restart visual studio. And you are done.(Note: You need to restart visual studio, otherwise changes will not reflect.)

Here is a sample unit test

[TestMethod]
public void TestMethod3()
{
    Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.Name);
    Thread.Sleep(2000);
}

Now I am running few test cases (11) with no parallelTestCount attribute and here is the Test Results window and summary

Test Results View - No attribute specified

Test Results View - No attribute specified

Test Results summary - No attribute specified

Test Results summary - No attribute specified

Now I added the parallelTestCount attribute, with value of 5 and here is the Test Results window and summary, you can notice the time difference between two executions.

Test Results View - parallelTestCount Attribute specified

Test Results View - parallelTestCount Attribute specified

Test Results Summary - With parallelTestCount attribute specified

Test Results Summary - With parallelTestCount attribute specified

Of course there are many other factors that affect this. There is the cost of starting and tearing down the run, so you will see a lesser effect if you have a few tests. It also depends on the number of CPU/cores you have and of course how fast your tests execute.

Happy unit testing :)

Posted in .Net, Unit Testing, Visual Studio | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to queue a new build using TFS API

Posted on January 12, 2012 by

Another post on TFS API, my last post was related to how to get build Definitions and Build Details from TFS 2010, and this post is about how to queue a new build in TFS 2010 Server.

As earlier you need to add reference of following assemblies

  1. Microsoft.TeamFoundation.dll
  2. Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll
  3. Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client.dll

which will be available under – C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0\ location.

And here is the code snippet

var tfsName = "http://dotnetthoughts:8080/tfs/defaultcollection";
var tfs = new TeamFoundationServer(tfsName, new UICredentialsProvider());
tfs.EnsureAuthenticated();
if (tfs.HasAuthenticated)
{
	var buildServer = tfs.GetService(typeof(IBuildServer)) as IBuildServer;
	var buildDefinition = buildServer.GetBuildDefinition("", "");
	buildServer.QueueBuild(buildDefinition);
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
    MessageBox.Show(exception.Message);
    throw;
}

Here is how it works, we are connecting and getting the TFS Server, then getting the Build Server using GetService method. And to get the build definition instead of the earlier post(to get all the Build definitions, we are passing “*”), we need to specify the Team project and Build name(Build definitions are unique per team project in TFS). Then we can call QueueBuild() method on Build server object, with build definition as the parameter, which will queue the build definition default values.

Happy coding :)

Posted in .Net, .Net 4.0, Version Control | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to use .Net assembly in VBScript

Posted on January 11, 2012 by

Few days before I got a requirement to use a .Net assembly in VBScript, but it was not working. But today I got the solution. It was related to my 64bit OS. :) In this post I am discussing how to create and use a .net assembly in VBScript or Javascript.

First we need to create a class library. Set the ComVisible attribute to true in the AssemblyInfo.cs manually.

[assembly: ComVisible(true)]

Or you can do it using Properties > Application Tab and select Assembly Information, from the Assembly Information dialog, Check the Make assembly COM-Visible check box.

Make Assembly COM Visible option from Assembly Information dialog

Make Assembly COM Visible option from Assembly Information dialog

Build the assembly. Now we need register the assembly. We can do it using RegAsm.exe. If your OS in 64 bit, then you need to use Regasm command from Framework64 folder(Normally it will be C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\ folder). For running RegAsm command it is recommended to sign the assembly. You can Sign the assembly Properties > Signing Tab.

Sign Assembly option

Sign Assembly option

As RegAsm command add / update information to Windows Registry, you need to run the RegAsm command as Administrator, otherwise it will not work.

You can register the assembly using following command, like this

regasm /codebase assemblyname.dll

You can unregister the assembly using RegAsm command, like this

regasm /u assemblyname.dll

That’s it. Now you can create the object of the .net assembly in VBScript. Like this, it will add 10 and 20 using C# Add method and returns the value.

Dim calcLib
Set calcLib = CreateObject("CalcLib.Math")
Dim result
result = calcLib.Add (10 , 20)
msgbox result

And here is the C# Class, which we are invoked from VBScript.

namespace CalcLib
{
    public class Math
    {
        public int Add(int number1, int number2)
        {
            return number1 + number2;
        }
    }
}

Happy Coding :)

Posted in .Net, .Net 3.0 / 3.5, .Net 4.0, Visual Studio, Windows 7 | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment