Today, we’ll discuss the top 10 Benefits of Unit Testing procedures in this article.

Unit testing is a powerful method that has become well-known.

Software is broken down into its most basic functional units during unit testing, and these components are then put through a rigorous testing process.

The many advantages of unit testing will be discussed in this article, along with how it enhances the quality of software development as a whole.

We will see below benefits,

Improved Code Quality – Benefits of Unit Testing

Unit testing helps developers identify and eliminate bugs at an early stage of development.

By writing tests that target individual units of code, such as functions or methods, developers can ensure that each unit behaves correctly in isolation.

This systematic approach to testing promotes clean and modular code design, leading to improved code quality.

With each unit passing its tests, developers gain confidence in the correctness of their codebase, reducing the likelihood of introducing bugs during subsequent development phases.

Early Defect/Bug Detection

Unit testing facilitates the detection of bugs at an early stage, allowing developers to address them promptly.

By isolating and testing individual units of code, issues can be identified before they propagate into complex and interconnected parts of the system.

This early bug detection significantly reduces the debugging effort required in later stages of development and enhances the overall efficiency of the software development process.

Facilitates Refactoring and Code Maintenance

Unit testing plays a vital role in code refactoring and maintenance.

Refactoring involves restructuring code without changing its external behavior.

Unit tests provide a safety net during refactoring, ensuring that the desired functionality is maintained after modifications.

By running unit tests after each refactoring step, developers can quickly identify any unintended side effects or regression issues.

This encourages developers to refactor code fearlessly, leading to cleaner, more maintainable codebases and making it easier to accommodate changing requirements or enhancements.

Promotes Teamwork and Collaboration

Teamwork is encouraged in software development initiatives through unit testing. Individual unit testing makes it simpler for several developers to work on various system components at once.

Thanks to the current unit tests, each developer may be confident that their changes have not caused any regression problems.

Unit tests also act as living documentation, giving developers a clear grasp of the desired behavior of certain pieces of code and enhancing teamwork.

Unit Test as Code Documentation

Unit tests act as living documentation, illustrating how individual units of code should behave. By reading unit tests, developers gain insights into the expected inputs, outputs, and interactions of code components.

This documentation aspect is invaluable when new developers join a project or when revisiting code after a significant period.

Unit tests serve as executable examples, helping developers understand the codebase faster and encouraging adherence to coding standards and best practices.

Create Mock behavior – Describe and test Unexpected behavior

Mocking simplifies the setup process for unit tests by eliminating the need to configure or provision real external systems.

With mock objects or functions, developers can define the expected interactions and outputs without worrying about complex setup procedures.

This simplification accelerates the test preparation phase, reducing the overhead associated with configuring and maintaining test environments. It also makes it easier to replicate.

Controlled Test Scenarios execution

Unit testing lets you go above and beyond considering testing.

You can go to any extent by unit testing your module and making them great.

For example, Mocking empowers developers to have precise control over various test scenarios.

By creating test objects or functions, developers can define specific behaviors, responses, or inputs for the simulated dependencies.

Developers can systematically cover a wide range of test cases, ensuring comprehensive test coverage and enhancing the overall reliability of the software.

Faster Debugging and Troubleshooting

The particular location of the problem is shown when a unit test fails, making it easier for developers to identify the root cause.

Unit tests act as a safety net while debugging and troubleshooting software.

With less time spent searching through large code bases for issues, developers may more quickly and efficiently correct errors thanks to this targeted approach to debugging.

By reducing the amount of time spent on debugging, unit testing helps developers maintain the development momentum and deliver high-quality software on time.

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

Unit testing is a core practice in TDD. Developers write tests before implementing the code, using them as a guide to drive the development process and ensure test coverage.

Unit tests act as a form of regression testing, ensuring that previously implemented functionality continues to work as expected after changes or updates.

While unit testing focuses on testing individual units, it also aids integration testing. By isolating units, developers can verify that they interact correctly when combined, detecting issues early in the integration process.

Do you have any comments or ideas or any better suggestions to share?

Please sound off your comments below.

Happy Coding !!

Summary

Unit testing is an essential method in software development that provides several advantages that enhance the quality of software systems. Unit testing benefits the entire development process by enhancing the quality of the code, enabling early issue identification, accelerating debugging, assisting code refactoring, encouraging collaboration, and offering code documentation. It enables programmers to create durable, maintainable code.

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The post Top 10 Benefits of Unit Testing – Awesome Code first appeared on TheCodeBuzz.

Today in this article, we will learn how to Unit Tests An Asynchronous Method In .NET Core with examples. Below are a few examples of the .NET core-based common unit testing sample and their resolution using mocking.

Today in this article, we will cover below aspects,

Here I am testing a controller Method that makes an asynchronous call to an external service using HTTPClient.

        [HttpGet]
        public async Task<IActionResult> GetAsync(string id)
        {
            Book book = null;
            try
            {
                // Test await method - Asynchronously 
                book = await _bookService.GetAsync(id);
                book.Price = 10;
                if (book == null)
                {
                    return NotFound();
                }
            }
            catch(Exception ex)
            {
            }
            // do more stuff

            return Ok(book);
        }

Resolution

Below is an example of how we can write unit test cases,

We will follow the AAA pattern where we will perform Arrange, Act, and Assertion.

Below is an example of mocking the Async method of Interface.

   var mockBookClient= new Mock<IBookService>();
   mockBookClient.Setup(c => c.GetAsync(document .Id)).ReturnsAsync(document);

Below is a complete sample example,

       
        [Fact]
        public async Task BookService_GetBookAsync_With_ValidBookID()
        {
            //Arrange
            Book document = new Book()
            {
                Author = "The",
                BookName = "CodeBUzz",
                Id = "1234"
            };

            var mockBookClient= new Mock<IBookService>();
            mockBookClient.Setup(c => c.GetAsync(document .Id)).ReturnsAsync(document);

            //Act
            BooksController service = new BooksController(mockBookClient.Object);
            var result = await service.GetAsync(bookID);

            //Assert
            Assert.NotNull(result);

        }

Better Assertion

If you would like to do a more rigorous assert on the return object which is always recommended, please use the below code to perform better assertion.

The below article mentions the checklist one should be aware of while Unit Testing an API Interface(Controller).

References :

• RESTFul API/Controller Unit Testing – Best Practices

• Unit Test cases Naming Conventions – Best Practices

Please note that we need to use ReturnsAsync instead of Returns to avail and set up the mock result using Moq for asynchronous operation.

Do you have any comments or ideas or any better suggestions to share?

Please sound off your comments below.

Happy Coding !!

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Today in this article we shall cover how to execute and Order Test cases by Display Name

As we already learned other techniques for ordering the test cases.

Ordering on test cases can be achieved by any of the below mechanisms,

• Alphabetical – Order test method based on test name’s Alphabetical order

Please see for more details: How to Order Unit Test cases by Alphabetical – Guidelines

• Priority– Order test method based on test name’s using priority order set by the user providing better control on execution.

Please see for more details: How to Order Unit Test cases by Priority – Guidelines

DisplayName – Order test method based on test name’s DisplayName order we shall cover this in today’s article,

Implement the ITestCaseOrderer and provide an ordering mechanism.

With this, we will order the Test cases using the collection name.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Xunit;
using Xunit.Abstractions;

namespace OrechstrationService.Project
{
    public class DisplayNameOrderer : ITestCollectionOrderer
        {
            public IEnumerable<ITestCollection> OrderTestCollections(
                IEnumerable<ITestCollection> testCollections) =>
                testCollections.OrderBy(collection => collection.DisplayName);
        }

}

TestCaseOrderer now can be defined using DisplayNameOrderer as below. Please note to add below two attributes on the test cases namespace used for the test project,

[assembly: CollectionBehavior(DisableTestParallelization = true)]
[assembly: TestCollectionOrderer("OrechstrationService.Project.DisplayNameOrderer", "OrechstrationService.Project")]

One can define the collection name using the Collection attribute as below.

Here you can decorate the test class with the collection names, Ex. Saving Account TestCollection

Example

[Collection("Saving Account TestCollection")]

[Collection("Credit Account TestCollection")]

[Collection("Bank AccountTest Collection")]

Here below is a complete example,

using Xunit;


// Need to turn off test parallelization so we can validate the run order
[assembly: CollectionBehavior(DisableTestParallelization = true)]
[assembly: TestCollectionOrderer("OrechstrationService.Project.DisplayNameOrderer", "OrechstrationService.Project")]
namespace OrechstrationService.Project.Http
{

    [Collection("Saving Account TestCollection")]
    public class HttpHelperClassTests1
    {
        public static bool SavingAccountTestCollection;

        [Fact]
        public static void SavinggAccountController_OnGetAccount_Valid_HTTPClient()
        {
            //Arrange

            //Act

            //Assert
            Assert.True(HttpHelperClassTests2.CreditAccountTestCollection);
            Assert.True(HttpHelperClassTests3.BankAccountTestCollection);
            SavingAccountTestCollection = true;


        }
    }

    [Collection("Credit Account TestCollection")]
    public class HttpHelperClassTests2
    {
        public static bool CreditAccountTestCollection;


        [Fact]
        public static void CreditController_OnGetAccount_Valid_Typed_HTTPClient()
        {

            //Arrange

            //Act

            //Assert
            Assert.False(HttpHelperClassTests1.SavingAccountTestCollection);    
            Assert.True(HttpHelperClassTests3.BankAccountTestCollection);
            CreditAccountTestCollection = true;
        }

    }

    [Collection("Bank AccountTest Collection")]
    public class HttpHelperClassTests3
    {
        public static bool BankAccountTestCollection;

        [Fact]
        public static void BankController_OnGetAccount_Valid_Typed_HTTPClient()
        {

            //Arrange

            //Act

            //Assert

            Assert.False(HttpHelperClassTests1.SavingAccountTestCollection);
            Assert.False(HttpHelperClassTests2.CreditAccountTestCollection);
            BankAccountTestCollection = true;

        }

    }
}

Once executed test cases execution order will be as per the collection name order alphabetically,

References :

• How to Order XUnit Test cases by Alphabetical – Guidelines

• How to Order XUnit Test cases by Priority – Guidelines

Do you have any comments or ideas or any better suggestions to share?

Please sound off your comments below.

Happy Coding !!

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The post How to Order Test cases by Display Name first appeared on TheCodeBuzz.

Today in this article, we will understand What is Unit tests and Unit Test Best Practices in Software Development.

We will cover the below aspects in the below article,

Why Unit Tests?

Your application/service consists of a bunch of functionalities built together to perform business operations. These small/large bunch of functionality together makes your application complete in a sense.

It’s important these small individual functionalities are robust enough to make sure your application performs best in a real production environment.

How will you make sure these small pieces in your application will be robust??

There is no other better way than Unit Test. Unit Test is the FIRST thing you should do to make your application robust. Tests are termed unit tests because here the emphasis is on each individual piece of application. Each small individual method is important and represents a unit and hence needs to be tested in isolation.

Where to start?

We understand the concept of Unit Tests but there is always confusion on “Where to start”. Isn’t it?

I have simplified as below,

All public functions within a class (created by you) require a unit test.

So if you want to start somewhere in an existing application, then start with a small class and a simple method in the class.

Now we got an answer for where to start.

Let’s look into a few best practices in general that we can follow. Please understand there are many best practices before we get crazed about this. but there are a few best-of-best practices that should be enough to write better unit test cases.

Here we really need not have to bother about Test First vs Code First. These best practices are generic enough to be applied to any approach of development you are using.

Best Practices for Unit Testing

In an all-to-remember unit test cases should follow the FIRST principle,

F = Fast

I = Isolated

R = Repeatable

S = Self-checking

T = Timely

This FIRST approach is explained in detail as below,

Best practices for Unit Testing

1. Unit test cases should be Fast.

Yes – every test should run within milliseconds. Fast enough to execute within 10 ms can be considered a good test,

Why? What does it really mean to Developer? See below,

• Build your method/functions as small as possible.

• If method/functions exist already, refactor it immediately (pretty simple to say but go and get in buy-in from your Manager 🙂 for refactoring the code)

• Small functions are easier to test and maintain.

• Small functions promote reading and reuse.

• Small functions help avoid hidden bugs that come with large functions. Large functions are sometimes impossible to test due to large dependencies and affect badly on code coverage.

So this best practice really has a broader meaning which drives all goodies to your code.

Do Not Stop here …Here is what will make you think to design a better method/function if you are following Test Driven Development (TDD) or even make you think redesign/refactoring your existing legacy code.

2. Unit test cases should be isolated

• Unit test cases are meant only for a given function and its business logic in a given class.

• If that method/functions (Let’s say A() )calls any other method/functions ( let’s say B())then you write separate unit tests for that dependency(i.e B()). That means you need to mock B() within A() to make isolation.

• Each unit test should be stateless and doesn’t depend on other unit tests by any means.

3. Unit Test cases should be Repeatable.

• This lot more depend on the second principle i.e Unit test cases are isolated.

• You get the same result for any number of times test cases are executed.

• You get the same result for any order in which test cases are executed as they are stateless in nature.

• That means you get the same result for all reasons except when breaking changes introduced by developers.

• Unit test cases find breaking changes right ahead of time.

4. Unit test cases should be Self Checking.

• Already written unit test cases will be kept on checking for any breaking changes introduced by any developers.

• Right ahead of time intimation of a new bug introduced in the code by failing Unit test cases.

• Self-checking will work on the local machine or could work on the build server as part of the CI-CD pipeline.

5. Unit test cases should be Timely

• A unit test should be written in a timely manner and should not take more time than the actual development of business functionality.

• Convinced? Here are the questions clarifying how much time should be spent on Unit test writing.

If your unit test is taking more time to write,

• That means you need to follow the first principle concept very seriously.

• Method/functions is not small enough to test all scenarios easily.

• Need to design/refactor your class, method/functions.

• That means need to pitch in hard negotiating on Design..and lastly, do not stop here .. go get the buy-in.

Unit test cases have + ve impact in the long run and do provide a lot of benefits on the maintenance side (shift left) for early identification of bugs and issues.

If working on existing code, unit test cases will give you a lot of early signals of coding issues and opportunities for improvements.

It’s important to implement all those if possible.

Remember maintenance is a big fat elephant and always eats away most of the project budget in SDLC.

Some additional best practices and guidelines for Unit Test cases,

• Test only public members. These public members can be used to test private members implicitly.

• Name your test appropriately. Please visit for naming conventions :
  • Unit Testing Naming Conventions and Standards

• Do not test auto-generated code-Example – Entity framework scaffolding, WSDL generated proxy class members, etc.

• Create stateless unit test cases.

• The order of execution of unit test cases is not important.

• Use code coverage tools for measuring code coverage.

• Mock everything which is a dependency.

• Interface-based programming favors unit test cases. Always program by abstraction.

• Use Test-driven development with the Test first approach.

• Do not test private members/functions/methods. Try testing them using the public method instead.

References :

• TDD – Unit Testing Naming Conventions and Standards

• What is IntegrationTesting

• Top 10 Benefits of Unit Testing – Awesome Code

Do you have any comments or ideas or any better suggestions to share?

Please sound off your comments below.

Happy Coding !!

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The post Unit Test Best Practices in Code Development first appeared on TheCodeBuzz.

Today’s article demonstrates how to Order Test cases execution using a testing framework. Today in this article, We shall cover this requirements using Test frameworks like MSTest, xUnit, and NUnit.

We will cover below aspects of test case ordering in today’s article,

As a good practice, we generally don’t order Unit test cases, because we always create them as stateless as possible and each unit test should run independently of each other.

But test case execution orders using Alphabetical or Display names still can be used for UnitTest cases if needed for better organizing the Test cases.

Priority orders can be used for functional test cases or Integration test cases where we need to perform the operation in certain orders.

This could be legitimate use cases for Integration test cases and Functional Test cases . When you are dealing with the testing of various workflow and functional scenarios it might be necessary to plan certain action in an order ex.by Priority order to execute the business workflow.

Example: Transcation in Banking

1.Login to Login page of Banking website

2.Showing default summary page

3.Performing fund transfer

4.Veryfing balance

Ordering on test cases can be achieved by any of the below mechanisms,

• Alphabetical – Order test method based on test name’s Alphabetical order

• DisplayName – Order test method based on test name’s DisplayName order

• Priority– Order test method based on test name’s using priority order set by the user providing better control on execution.

Understanding ITestCaseOrderer interface

• ITestCaseOrderer is the user interface provided by the XUnit ordering the execution of test cases. A class implements this interface to participate in ordering tests for the test runner.

• Test case orderers are applied using the Xunit.TestCaseOrdererAttribute.

• Test case orderer can be applied at the below level,
  • Assembly,
  • Test collection
  • Test class level.

XUnit Test case Order by Priority – custom attribute

To order xUnit tests with custom attributes like below we have used TestPriority.

Define a TestPriorityAttribute and PriorityOrderer as follows.

Please see below an example of TestPriorityAttribute definition.

    
    [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false)]
    public class TestPriorityAttribute : Attribute
    {
        public int Priority { get; private set; }

        public TestPriorityAttribute(int priority) => Priority = priority;
    }

PriorityOrderer class is defined as below using ITestCaseOrderer

 
public class PriorityOrderer : ITestCaseOrderer
    {

        public IEnumerable<TTestCase> OrderTestCases<TTestCase>(
            IEnumerable<TTestCase> testCases) where TTestCase : ITestCase
        {
            string assemblyName = typeof(TestPriorityAttribute).AssemblyQualifiedName!;
            var sortedMethods = new SortedDictionary<int, List<TTestCase>>();
            foreach (TTestCase testCase in testCases)
            {
                int priority = testCase.TestMethod.Method
                    .GetCustomAttributes(assemblyName)
                    .FirstOrDefault()
                    ?.GetNamedArgument<int>(nameof(TestPriorityAttribute.Priority)) ?? 0;

                GetOrCreate(sortedMethods, priority).Add(testCase);
            }

            foreach (TTestCase testCase in
                sortedMethods.Keys.SelectMany(
                    priority => sortedMethods[priority].OrderBy(
                        testCase => testCase.TestMethod.Method.Name)))
            {
                yield return testCase;
            }
        }

        private static TValue GetOrCreate<TKey, TValue>(
            IDictionary<TKey, TValue> dictionary, TKey key)
            where TKey : struct
            where TValue : new() =>
            dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out TValue result)
                ? result
                : (dictionary[key] = new TValue());
    }

Once you define the classes above, Attribute your test class with the TestCaseOrdererAttribute to the PriorityOrderer.

    [TestCaseOrderer("OrechstrationService.Project.Orderers.PriorityOrderer", "OrechstrationService.Project")]
    public class HttpHelperTests
    {
        public static bool Test1Called;
        public static bool Test2Called;
        public static bool Test3Called;  

        [Fact, TestPriority(3)]
        public async Task AccountController_OnGetAccount_Valid_HTTPClient()
        { 
            //Arrange
          
            //Act

            //Assert
            Test3Called = true;
            Assert.True(Test1Called);
            Assert.True(Test2Called);
        
        }
    }

Below are examples of other unit test cases which execute based on priority.

        [Fact, TestPriority(2)]
        public async Task AccountController_OnGetAccount_Valid_HTTPClientFactory()
        {
            //Arrange
          
            //Act

            //Assert
            Test2Called = true;
            Assert.True(Test1Called);
            Assert.False(Test3Called);

        }


        [Fact, TestPriority(1)]
        public async void AccountController_OnGetAccount_Valid_Typed_HTTPClient()
        {

           //Arrange
          
            //Act

            //Assert
            Test1Called = true;
            Assert.False(Test2Called);
            Assert.False(Test1Called);
        }

With the above arrangements now once we execute the test cases, we shall see test cases are getting executed based on the priority set.

Alternatively – Assert statements for the above 3 Tests using Test1Called, Test2Called, and Test3Called also confirm the order of the execution is correct.

Order Test cases in Alphabetical Order

Implement the ITestCaseOrderer and provide an ordering mechanism. With this, we will order the Test cases using the method name.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Xunit.Abstractions;
using Xunit.Sdk;

namespace OrechstrationService.Project
{
    public class AlphabeticalOrderer : ITestCaseOrderer
    {
        public IEnumerable<TTestCase> OrderTestCases<TTestCase>(
            IEnumerable<TTestCase> testCases) where TTestCase : ITestCase =>
            testCases.OrderBy(testCase => testCase.TestMethod.Method.Name);
    }


}

TestCaseOrderer now can be defined using AlphabeticalOrderer as below,

   [TestCaseOrderer("OrechstrationService.Project.Orderers.AlphabeticalOrderer", "OrechstrationService.Project")]

    public class HttpHelperTests
    {
        public static bool Test1Called;
        public static bool Test2Called;
        public static bool Test3Called;  

        [Fact]
        public async Task AccountController_OnGetAccount_Valid_HTTPClient()
        { 
            //Arrange
          
            //Act

            //Assert
            Test3Called = true;
            Assert.True(Test1Called);
            Assert.True(Test2Called);
        
        }
        [Fact]
        public async Task AccountController_OnGetAccount_Valid_HTTPClientFactory()
        {
            //Arrange
          
            //Act

            //Assert
            Test2Called = true;
            Assert.True(Test1Called);
            Assert.False(Test3Called);

        }


        [Fact]
        public async void AccountController_OnGetAccount_Valid_Typed_HTTPClient()
        {

           //Arrange
          
            //Act

            //Assert
            Test1Called = true;
            Assert.False(Test2Called);
            Assert.False(Test3Called);
        }

}

Once executed you can see test cases are now run based on the method name,

Order XUnit test cases by Collection Name Order

Please see the below article for more details,

• XUnit Test case Order by Display Name

References:

• Data-Driven Testing in .NET Core

Do you have any comments or ideas or any better suggestions to share?

Please sound off your comments below.

Happy Coding !!

Please bookmark this page and share it with your friends. Please Subscribe to the blog to receive notifications on freshly published (2025) best practices and guidelines for software design and development.

The post How to Order Test cases – Guidelines first appeared on TheCodeBuzz.