Use of undeclared type 'ViewController' when unit testing my own ViewController in Swift?

Question

I have been trying to write test cases in Swift to test my ViewController. However, when I try to instantiate my own ViewController in a XCTestCase I get "Use of undeclared type 'ViewController' ". (ViewController is the name of my own UIViewController class)

Has anyone else faced this issue before? I am using Xcode 6 beta 5

Answer 1

Swift 1

You should add ViewController.swift file's target membership also as your test target also if you are not using framework. Select class file add to target as shown in image:

OR

If you are ViewController is within a framework : ViewController class is in different target and You are not declaring class with public access level. By default Classes are internal (Accessible within a target). Declare it as public and also make methods or properties as public if you want to access it i.e

public class ViewController: UIViewController {

    public var content: String!

    override public func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
    }

    override public func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
        super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
        // Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
    }

}

Swift 2 Update

In your test target, just import the module you want to test using the @testable keyword:

@testable import moduleToTest

You can now access public and internal symbols in your test target.

swift 2 Xcode 7 unit testing

Answer 2

I also got this error recently and none of the above steps fixed the problem, what did fix it was removing non-swift file from the Compile sources build phase in the Target you want to run tests on.

Make sure your app is actually compiling. This was failing silently and the error message wasn't helpful

Answer 3

In swift 4 you can create a new unit test target, it should import the target you have selected as stated below

In order to test any logic inside the view controller you should have a reference to it so that in order to reach the viewController you should has a reference to the storyboard first as stated below

// Put setup code here. This method is called before the invocation of each test method in the class.
let storyBoard = UIStoryboard(name: "Main", bundle: Bundle.main)
    viewController = storyBoard.instantiateViewController(withIdentifier: "ViewController") as! ViewController
    _ = viewController.view

The previous code should be inserted inside setUp method, this method is called each time the unit test is running. Note the viewController is a variable defined inside XCTestCase class as stated in the screenshot attached below

For now you can access any logic defined inside the viewController class by calling viewController.funCode or viewController.variable

enter image description here

DO NOT FORGET: in order to reach the view controller by storyboard you should identify. in order to do that you should go to storyboard, then select the viewController, then from the right panel, go to "show the identity inspector" and set a value for the storyboard ID = 'ViewController'

For more information please have a look at : https://github.com/msabukwaik/networking-example