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

Question

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 MyTe         


        

Answer 1

An important difference between constructor and TestFixtureSetUp is that, in NUnit 2 at least, constructor code is actually executed on test enumeration, not just test running, so basically you want to limit ctor code to only populating readonly, i.e. parameter, values. Anything that causes side-effects or does any actual work needs to either be wrapped in a Lazy or done in the TestFixtureSetUp / OneTimeSetUp. So, you can think of the constructor as solely a place to configure the test. Whereas the TestFixtureSetUp is where the test fixture, the required initial state of the system before tests are run, is initialized.