C# Web Project Testing and Debug
Techniques
Several options
are available for software testing and debug, but here we'll focus on unit
testing with Visual Studio, integration testing with SoapUI and Selenium
WebDriver, and debugging with Visual Studio and web browser developer tools.
Why
Test?
Before I get
started, the reason developers care about testing is because it helps minimize
software defects throughout the entire software
development life-cycle. A couple things to note, however, is that
software testing does not solve all our problems:
- Testing adds
time to the development timeline because things like unit and integration
tests don't write themselves, and
- Tests will
find the bugs in the tested conditions--but defects may still exist in
promoted software.
Despite the
caveats, software development should include testing to ensure the highest
quality of code from start all the way through to future maintenance.
Software projects should start with clear goals for testing to ensure
adequate test coverage within the project budget and timeline.
Types
of Testing
Unit Test
Unit tests are
software written to evaluate a given condition against the result of
executing code to ensure a consistent and predictable outcome. Unit tests
are written to test the lowest level of functionality within a program.
As the word unit suggests, the test condition should
focus on a small chunk of code that does a very specific task such as adding
two numbers. Shashank Tiwari wrote an article, Software Testing Types you Should Know About, that
does a good job introducing the major types of testing. Below is his
illustration of how a unit test works.
 |
| Tiwari's logic diagram of how a unit test works |
Integration Test
Integration tests
are software written to evaluate a given condition against the expected result
of multiple software components working together to form a single response.
As an example, an integration test may be written to check an employee
web service method returns a specific employee name based on a given employee
ID. The illustration below describes how the integration test would look
in this scenario.
 |
| Integration test example where the name John Doe is expected given an employee ID of 1 |
Test Tools
Several
frameworks and applications are available for testing. Here I'll cover
unit testing in Visual Studio and integration testing with SmartBear's SoapUI,
Chrome's Postman, and Selenium.
Unit Testing in Visual Studio
Unit testing in
Visual Studio is pretty easy and is described in this great MSDN article. Note that you can use
several unit test frameworks such as NUnit; however, Microsoft's UnitTest
framework is readily available and provides everything you need to get started.
Unit tests can be
developed before authoring the application code in a process described as test
driven development. In this approach, the developer begins with
writing unit tests and uses Visual Studio's automation tools to build-out the
application code. In my experience, the test driven approach promotes
detail in application design and an improved focus on development. This MSDN article describes a quick start
example for a test driven Visual Studio solution.
Integration Testing with Smarbear's SoapUI
Automated Testing with Selenium
