Visual Studio Unit Testing of Windows Forms

Question

We\'re working on a project here in Visual Studio 2008. We\'re using the built-in testing suite provided with it (the Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting namespace

Answer 1

You should use Microsoft Coded UI to test the UI layer. This involves writing (or recording) tests that mimic actions that a user would perform and writing assert statements to ensure that the correct output is achieved.

Of course, this is arguable not unit testing, because it is difficult to create actions from the front end that test a single unit of work and is not a replacement for other unit testing. I agree also that the front end business logic should be a thin as possible. However, this will fill any gaps where your unit tests do not cover. Hopefully only small units of work will be not covered by your unit tests, so that the coded UI tests will catch the remaining untested units.

Coded UI comes built in with the latest versions of Visual Studio Premium. I suggest that you do not just use the record functionality, but instead learn how to write the tests yourself as this gives you greater flexibility.