In previous posts we looked at testing for thrown exceptions in xUnit.net and NUnit. In this post we’re going to see how to test in MSTest V2.

As with the previous posts, the class being tested is as follows:

public class TemperatureSensor
{
    bool _isInitialized;

    public void Initialize()
    {
        // Initialize hardware interface
        _isInitialized = true;
    }

    public int ReadCurrentTemperature()
    {
        if (!_isInitialized)
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException("Cannot read temperature before initializing.");
        }

        // Read hardware temp
        return 42; // Simulate for demo code purposes
    }
}

And the first test to check the normal execution:

[TestMethod]
public void ReadTemperature()
{
    var sut = new TemperatureSensor();

    sut.Initialize();

    var temperature = sut.ReadCurrentTemperature();

    Assert.AreEqual(42, temperature);
}

Next, a test can be written to check that the expected exception is thrown:

[TestMethod]
public void ErrorIfReadingBeforeInitialized()
{
    var sut = new TemperatureSensor();

    Assert.ThrowsException<InvalidOperationException>(() => sut.ReadCurrentTemperature());
}

The preceding code using the Assert.ThrowsException method, this method takes the type of the expected exception as the generic type parameter (in this case InvalidOperationException). As the method parameter an action/function can be specified – this is the code that is supposed to cause the exception to be thrown.

The thrown exception can also be captured if you need to test the exception property values:

[TestMethod]
public void ErrorIfReadingBeforeInitialized_CaptureExDemo()
{
    var sut = new TemperatureSensor();

    var ex = Assert.ThrowsException<InvalidOperationException>(() => sut.ReadCurrentTemperature());

    Assert.AreEqual("Cannot read temperature before initializing.", ex.Message);
}

To learn more about using exceptions to handle errors in C#, check out my Error Handling in C# with Exceptions Pluralsight course or to learn more about MS Test V2 check out my Automated Testing with MSTest V2 Pluralsight course.

You can start watching with a Pluralsight free trial.

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