The Robot Lives

Was getting annoyed today with MsTest’s support for inline datasources for test cases. Started work on a little work around hack to simply generate and inject the xml files behind the scenes.

I ideally I will be able to inject enough logic into mstest that I can get rid of that intermediary as well.

For now I have

        [DataProviderMethodName("DataProviderExample")]
        [TestMethod]
        [DataSource("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.DataSource.XML", "|DataDirectory|\\TestMethod1.xml", "scenario", DataAccessMethod.Sequential)]
        public void UseRawDataProviderEntries()
        {
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("somestring = " + TestContext.DataRow["somestring"].ToString());
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Gotcha = " + TestContext.DataRow["Gotcha"].ToString());
            Assert.IsTrue((bool)RawDataProviderContext["Gotcha"]);
        }

And I want to atleast get to

        [DataProviderMethodName("DataProviderExample")]
        [TestMethod]
        public void UseRawDataProviderEntries()
        {
            int t = 3243;
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("somestring = " + TestContext.DataRow["somestring"].ToString());
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Gotcha = " + TestContext.DataRow["Gotcha"].ToString());
            Assert.IsTrue((bool)RawDataProviderContext["Gotcha"]);
        }

although . . .

        [TestMethod]
        [DataProviderMethodName("DataProviderExample")]
        public void UseRawDataProviderEntries(bool Gotcha, string somestring)
        {
            int t = 3243;
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("somestring = " + somestring);
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Gotcha = " + Gotcha.ToString());
            Assert.IsTrue(Gotcha);
        }
        //===============
        // And
        //===============
        [TestMethod]
        [InlineDataSet]
        [DataSet("gotcha column","some string column")]
        [DataSet("just used reflection "," to read attributes and plug them in order of appearance into testmethod")]
        public void UseRawDataProviderEntries(string gotcha, string somestring)
        {
            int t = 3243;
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("somestring = " + somestring);
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("gotcha = " + gotcha);
            Assert.IsTrue(Gotcha == "true");
        }

would be swell.

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Data;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using System.Reflection;
using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace TestProject1
{
    [System.AttributeUsage(System.AttributeTargets.Method)]
    public class DataProviderMethodName : System.Attribute
    {
        private string name;
        public double version;

        public string Name
        {
            get
            {
                return name;
            }
        }

        public DataProviderMethodName(string name)
        {
            this.name = name;
            version = 1.0;
        }
    }

    [TestClass]
    public abstract class HackThePlanet
    {
        //todo encapsulate further
        protected static Dictionary>> _dataprovidercache = new Dictionary>>();
        protected Dictionary RawDataProviderContext
        {
            get
            {
                if (TestContext.DataRow["meta_provider"] != null)
                {
                    return _dataprovidercache[TestContext.DataRow["meta_provider"] + "_" + TestContext.DataRow["meta_providerhash"]][int.Parse(TestContext.DataRow["meta_index"].ToString())];
                }
                else
                {
                    return new Dictionary();
                }
            }
        }

        private TestContext testContextInstance;
        ///

        ///Gets or sets the test context which provides
        ///information about and functionality for the current test run.
        ///

        public TestContext TestContext
        {
            get
            {
                return testContextInstance;
            }
            set
            {
                testContextInstance = value;
            }
        }
    }

    [TestClass]
    public class UnitTest1 : HackThePlanet
    {

        static public List> DataProviderExample()
        {
            return new List>()
            {
                new Dictionary {  {"Gotcha", false}  , {"somestring","value2"}   },
                new Dictionary {  {"Gotcha", true}   , {"somestring","value3"}   },
                new Dictionary {  {"Gotcha", false}  , {"somestring","value2"}   },
            };
        }

        static public List> DataProviderExample2()
        {
            return new List>()
            {
                new Dictionary {  {"Gotcha", false}  , {"agag","value2"}   },
                new Dictionary {  {"Gotcha", true}   , {"agag","value3"}   },
                new Dictionary {  {"Gotcha", false}  , {"agag","value2"}   },
            };
        }

        [ClassInitialize()]
        public static void SetupClass(TestContext testContext)
        {
            var d = new DataSourceAttribute("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.DataSource.XML", "|DataDirectory|\\XMLFile1.xml", "row", DataAccessMethod.Sequential);
            var de = new DeploymentItemAttribute("TestProject1\\XMLFile1.xml");

            MethodInfo[] methodInfos = typeof(UnitTest1).GetMethods(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
            foreach(var m in methodInfos)
            {
                var t = m.Attributes;
                var a = m.GetCustomAttributes(false);

                var UseDataProviderMethodList = (from dpm in a
                                             where dpm.GetType() == typeof(DataProviderMethodName)
                                             select dpm);

                if (UseDataProviderMethodList.Count() > 0)
                {
                    // Grab DataSourceAttribute
                    var DataSourceAttributeList = (from dsa in a
                                               where dsa.GetType() == typeof(DataSourceAttribute)
                                               select dsa);

                    if (DataSourceAttributeList.Count() > 0)
                    {
                        var DataProviderMethodName = ((DataProviderMethodName)UseDataProviderMethodList.First()).Name;
                        var DataProviderMethod = typeof(UnitTest1).GetMethod(DataProviderMethodName);
                        var dataset = (List>)DataProviderMethod.Invoke(null, new object[0]);

                        //todo add some hash logic here if we want to allow dataprovider to return non determanistic data.
                        var hash = DateTime.Now.GetHashCode();
                        _dataprovidercache[DataProviderMethodName + "_" + hash] = dataset;

                        var DataSource = (DataSourceAttribute)DataSourceAttributeList.First();
                        //todo better support for different location preferences.
                        var requestedFile = DataSource.ConnectionString.Replace("|DataDirectory|\\", "\\");

                        //todo use xml tools for htis
                        string output = "";
                        output += "\n";
                        output += "\n";

                        int index = 0;

                        foreach (Dictionary scenario in dataset)
                        {
                            output += "\n";
                            // record keeping
                            output += "" + (index++) + "";
                            output += "" + DataProviderMethodName + "";
                            output += "" + hash + "";
                            foreach (KeyValuePair kv in scenario)
                            {
                                output += "     <" + kv.Key.Replace("\"", "\\\"") + ">" + kv.Value.ToString().Replace("\"", "\\\"") + "\n";
                            }
                            output += "\n";
                        }
                        output += "\n";
                        System.IO.File.WriteAllText(testContext.DeploymentDirectory + requestedFile, output);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestMethod1()
        {
            this.ToString();
            bool k = true;
            Assert.IsTrue(k);
        }

        //@todo Implement some way of preventing overwrites to the same DataSource.XML file ( preferably alter what is stored in the runner for xml name and
        // just replace with testcase name to insure uniqueness.
        [DataProviderMethodName("DataProviderExample")]
        [TestMethod]
        [DataSource("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.DataSource.XML", "|DataDirectory|\\TestMethod1.xml", "scenario", DataAccessMethod.Sequential)]
        public void UseRawDataProviderEntries()
        {
            int t = 3243;
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("somestring = " + TestContext.DataRow["somestring"].ToString());
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Gotcha = " + TestContext.DataRow["Gotcha"].ToString());
            Assert.IsTrue((bool)RawDataProviderContext["Gotcha"]);
        }

        [DataProviderMethodName("DataProviderExample2")]
        [TestMethod]
        [DataSource("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.DataSource.XML", "|DataDirectory|\\TestMethod2.xml", "scenario", DataAccessMethod.Sequential)]
        public void UseRegularTestContext()
        {
            int t = 3243;
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("agag = " + TestContext.DataRow["agag"].ToString());
            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Gotcha = " + TestContext.DataRow["Gotcha"].ToString());
            Assert.IsTrue(TestContext.DataRow["agag"].ToString() == "value3");
        }

    }
}

. . .

Courtesy of the long list of things you probably shouldn’t do but will anyway heres how one goes about implementing mutex locking between multiple powershell scripts.

<#
1. Instantiate Mutex Object using new-object syntax
2. Use the same "DesiredMutexName" across scripts.  Or move mutex logic into a shared script included by each script desiring access to these mutexes.  (. Path\ScriptWithMutexLocks.ps1)
#>
$mutex = new-object -TypeName System.Threading.Mutex -ArgumentList $false, "YourDesiredMutexName";

# 3. Lock Access to critical sections in each script
$result = $mutex.WaitOne();
<#
Critical Section
#>

#4 Release
$mutex.ReleaseMutex();
<#
Script Specific / Non viotile section
#>

. . . Enjoy

I’ve been working on a port of JBehave/Cucumber for PHPUnit. So far things are looking good and I am getting very close to pushing my source code up to the google project page.

Essentially I hsve setup a test suite class that uses some simple regex logic to map test step functions to the plain text sentences stored in my test text file. I’ve got a long way to go in terms of polish and finish but the initial work looks pretty good so far.

More »

Andrescue has a couple of just genius approaches to generic meta programming his book “Modern C++ Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied.” I really recommend checking it out.