In a previous post, testing for thrown exceptions using xUnit.net was demonstrated. In this post we’ll see how to do the same with NUnit.

Once again 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
    }
}

The first test can be to test the happy path:

[Test]
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:

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

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

Notice in the preceding code that any InvalidOperationException thrown will pass the test. To ensure that the thrown exception is correct, it can be captured and further asserts performed against it:

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

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

    Assert.AreEqual("Cannot read temperature before initializing.", ex.Message);
    // or:
    Assert.That(ex.Message, Is.EqualTo("Cannot read temperature before initializing."));
}

There’s also other ways to assert against expected exceptions such as the following:

Assert.Throws(Is.TypeOf<InvalidOperationException>()
                .And.Message.EqualTo("Cannot read temperature before initializing."), 
              () => sut.ReadCurrentTemperature());

There’s some personal preference involved when choosing a style, for example the preceding code could be considered more verbose by some and may muddle the distinction between the Act and Assert phases of a test.

To learn more about using exceptions to handle errors in C#, check out my Error Handling in C# with Exceptions Pluralsight course.

You can start watching with a Pluralsight free trial.

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