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When do I use the TestFixtureSetUp attribute instead of a default constructor?

Asked 2008-10-17T15:48:41.747
84

The NUnit documentation doesn't tell me when to use a method with a TestFixtureSetup and when to do the setup in the constructor.

public class MyTest
{
    private MyClass myClass;

    public MyTest()
    {
        myClass = new MyClass();
    }

    [TestFixtureSetUp]
    public void Init()
    {
        myClass = new MyClass();
    }
}

Are there any good/bad practices about the TestFixtureSetup versus default constructor or isn't there any difference?

c# unit-testing nunit
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1 Answer

14

One thing you can't do with [TestFixtureSetup] that you can do in the constructor is receive parameters from the [TestFixture] .

If you want to parameterise your test fixture, then you will have to use the constructor for at least some of the set-up. So far, I've only used this for integration tests, e.g. for testing a data access layer with multiple data providers:

[TestFixture("System.Data.SqlClient",
  "Server=(local)\\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=MyTestDatabase;Integrated Security=True;Pooling=False"))]
[TestFixture("System.Data.SQLite", "Data Source=MyTestDatabase.s3db")])]
internal class MyDataAccessLayerIntegrationTests
{
    MyDataAccessLayerIntegrationTests(
        string dataProvider,
        string connectionString)
    {
        ...
    }
}
answered 2010-08-27T01:36:39.850

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