Developer News

Building an Invoice Application with ASP.NET and Crystal Reports -

May 11, 2009 – 5:00 pm

Building an Invoice Application with ASP.NET and Crystal Reports - Part 1
In this first part of the series, Vince examines the creation of an invoice with the help of Crystal Reports by using the Adventure Works sample database. He provides detailed coverage of each step including the concept of header and detail records and one to many relationships with the help of relevant screen shots and source code. The article also demonstrates the usage of the Crystal Report Viewer and the Object Model to view the report as a PDF using ASP.NET.
Vince Varallo

TestDriven.Net Options Pane

In the latest version of TestDriven.Net you will find a new options pane. The options are as follows:

Hide trace/debug output when running all tests in project/solution

In the past this setting has always been hardwired to true. It means you can add trace information to a test without cluttering up the Test output pane when all tests are executed. An alternative way to ensure a message will always appear in the output is to use Console.WriteLine rather than Trace.WriteLine . This also means the verbose Gallio/MbUnit test run output will show up when executing all tests in a project.

Cache test process between test runs

By default the external test process will be cached when the Run Test(s) command is used. This process appears in the tool tray as a rocket icon which can be used to kill the process. This is fine unless one of your tests starts leaking leaking native resources (such as leaving open a file handle). The best solution is to fix the resource leak, but you now have to option to work around the issue by killing the test process at the end of each test run. This can be useful if the resource leak is in a 3rd party DLL which can t be easily be changed.

Categories

This option supports the most common use of test categories; you can choose to include or exclude a selection of categories. This is useful if you want to exclude long running tests or if your machine isn t configured to execute integration tests. This feature is currently only supported by the NUnit runner that comes with TestDriven.Net, but I believe it will be supported by a a future version of Gallio.

You can specify your NUnit test categories like this:

    [Test, Category("LongRunning")] 
    public void LongRunning() 
    { 
        Thread.Sleep(10000); 
    } 

There are lots of features in TestDriven.Net that could be exposed as options. I ll try to resist this temptation as much as possible, but I m sure a few more will creep in.

TestDriven.Net 2.21: Now includes NUnit 2.5 RC

Support for NUnit 2.5 RC

A couple of days ago, Charlie Poole announced that the first NUnit 2.5 release candidate is now uploaded. I ve hurried to get a new version of TestDriven.Net with support for this version ready. I m happy to announce that TestDriven.Net 2.21 Beta (which includes NUnit 2.5 RC) is now available for download.

This is a major NUnit release with lots of new features. Here is the list that was posted on the NUnit mailing list:

1. Parameterized (data-driven) tests are supported, with features similar to those found in mbUnit and xUnit.net.
2. Theories - as used in JUnit- are supported fully, including support for Assume.That.
3. New attributes allow the specifying the thread and apartment state requirements of a test.
4. Exception handling can now be moved into the test code using Assert.Throws or the Throws.Exception syntax.
5. Test methods and fixtures may now be generic and many asserts and constraint expressions now support generic syntax.
6. Many constraints now permit substitution of a user-defined comparison algorithm through the Using modifier. Lambda expressions are supported.
7. Test execution may now take place in a separate process for better isolation.
8. Tests may be loaded and executed using a selected runtime version.
9. Tests, setup methods, teardown methods and data sources may be static if desired. If there are no instance methods, then NUnit doesn’t need to construct your test class.
10. Source code is displayed in the gui, where available.

Charlie has also posted a top 10 reasons try NUnit 2.5.

Improved x86 / 32-bit support on a 64-bit OS

This version also contains improved support for running tests in a 32-bit process. To configure a test project for 32-bit execution, simply select x86 as the Platform target in the project properties. After doing this, the Run Test(s) and Test With > NUnit 2.5 commands will execute your tests in a 32-bit process (this doesn t work for NUnit 2.4). By default projects configured for Any CPU will execute tests in a 64-bit process (unless you re testing with NCover, Team Coverage or dotTrace).

  

Experimental Visual Studio 2010 support

TestDriven.Net was working with the Visual Studio 2010 PDC CTP version. Unfortunately I ve had less luck with more recent pre-Beta versions (Visual Studio was crashing). You can try the experimental support by choosing Custom setup and enabling the Visual Studio 2010 feature. There is a chance this will be working again when the Visual Studio 2010 Beta is released.

Trace/debug messages now appear in Debug pane

When stepping through code started from TestDriven.Net, you may have noticed that trace/debug messages appeared in the Test pane but not the Debug pane. Trace/debug diagnostic messages will only appear in the Test pane when targeting specific tests, but not when executing all tests in a project / solution.

Release Notes & Download

Here are links to the TestDriven.Net release notes and download.

Don t hesitate to contact me or the NUnit team if you find any issues with this release.