UPDATE: This functionality is now rolled into the latest version of MbUnit.
A long time ago Patrick Cauldwell wrote up a technique for managing external files within unit tests by embedding them as resources and unpacking the resources during the unit test. This is a powerful technique for making unit tests self contained.
If you look in our unit tests for Subtext, I took this approach to heart, writing several different methods in our UnitTestHelper class for extracting embedded resources.
Last night, I had the idea to make the code cleaner and even easier to use by implementing a custom test decorator attribute for my favorite unit testing framework, MbUnit.
Usage Examples
The following code snippets demonstrates the usage of the attribute within a unit test. These code samples assume an embedded resource already exists in the same assembly that the unit test itself is defined in.
This first test demonstrates how to extract the resource to a specific file. You can specify a full destination path, or a path relative to the current directory.
[Test]
[ExtractResource("Embedded.Resource.Name.txt", "TestResource.txt")]
public void CanExtractResourceToFile()
{
Assert.IsTrue(File.Exists("TestResource.txt"));
}
The next demonstrates how to extract the resource to a stream rather than a file.
[Test]
[ExtractResource("Embedded.Resource.Name.txt")]
public void CanExtractResourceToStream()
{
Stream stream = ExtractResourceAttribute.Stream;
Assert.IsNotNull(stream, "The Stream is null");
using(StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
Assert.AreEqual("Hello World!", reader.ReadToEnd());
}
}
As demonstrated in the previous example, you can access the stream via the static ExtractResourceAttribute.Stream property. This is only set if you don’t specify a destination.
In case you’re wondering, the stream is stored in a static member marked with the [ThreadStatic] attribute. That way if you are taking advantage of MbUnits ability to repeat a test multiple times using multiple threads, you should be OK.
What if the resource is embedded in another assembly other than the one you are testing?
Not to worry. You can specify a type (any type) defined in the assembly that contains the embedded resource like so:
[Test]
[ExtractResource("Embedded.Resource.txt"
, "TestResource.txt"
, ResourceCleanup.DeleteAfterTest
, typeof(TypeInAssemblyWithResource))]
public void CanExtractResource()
{
Assert.IsTrue(File.Exists("TestResource.txt"));
}
[Test]
[ExtractResource("Embedded.Resource.txt"
, typeof(TypeInAssemblyWithResource))]
public void CanExtractResourceToStream()
{
Stream stream = ExtractResourceAttribute.Stream;
Assert.IsNotNull(stream, "The Stream is null");
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
Assert.AreEqual("Hello World!", reader.ReadToEnd());
}
}
This attribute should go a long way to making unit tests that use external files cleaner. It also demonstrates how easy it is to extend MbUnit.
A big Thank You goes to Jay Flowers for his help with this code. And before I forget, you can download the code for this custom test decorator here.
Please note that I left in my unit tests for the attribute which will fail unless you change the embedded resource name to match an embedded resource in your own assembly.