Testing for exceptions with [TestCase] attribute in NUnit 3?

Corpus Gigantus picture Corpus Gigantus · Jan 28, 2016 · Viewed 14.6k times · Source

How do I test for exceptions in a TestCase with NUnit3?

Let's say I have a method Divide(a,b) defined as follows:

public double Divide(double a, double b)
{
    if(Math.Abs(b) < double.Epsilon) throw new ArgumentException("Divider cannot be 0");
    return a/b;
}

I want to test this method using NUnit 3.0 test cases, so maybe I have:

[TestCase(-10, 2, -5)]
[TestCase(-1, 2, -0.5)]
public void TestDivide(double a, double b, double result)
{
    Assert.That(_uut.Divide(a, b), Is.EqualTo(result));
}

Is there a way to specify a Test Case that will cause Divide() to throw an ArgumentException and somehow have this as the expected result, e.g. something along the lines of:

[TestCase(-10, 2, -5)]
[TestCase(-1, 2, -0.5)]
[TestCase(-1, 0, ExpectedResult = TypeOf(ArgumentException)]
public void TestDivide(double a, double b, double result)
{
    Assert.That(_uut.Divide(a, b), Is.EqualTo(result));
}

(Of course I could define a separate test method and use Assert.Throws() in this, so this is purely out of curiosity)

Answer

Chris picture Chris · Jan 28, 2016

ExpectedException would have been the correct method for NUnit 2.X, but it was removed from NUnit 3.

There's a various snippets of discussion in the NUnit Google Group and the equivalent Dev group - but it looks like the decision was made that it's generally a better design pattern to test expected outcomes, and exceptions in separate methods. (link)

The only way to do this in NUnit 3, would be to break it down in to two separate tests. (Confirmed in a similar question answered by the NUnit core team, here.)

[TestCase(-10, 2, -5)]
[TestCase(-1, 2, -0.5)]
public void TestDivide(double a, double b, double result)
{
    Assert.That(_uut.Divide(a, b), Is.EqualTo(result));
}

[TestCase(-1, 0)]
public void TestDivideThrows(double a, double b)
{
    Assert.That(() => _uut.Divide(a, b), Throws.TypeOf<ArgumentException>());
}