Combining Ranorex 3.0 and Visual Studio 2010 for UI Unit Testing

public VIPUnitTest()
{
    Ranorex.Keyboard.AbortKey = System.Windows.Forms.Keys.Pause;
}

Recordings or User Code Modules

The generated class for a recording implements the ITestModule interface:

public interface ITestModule
{
    void Run();
}

Per default the Run() method is private, therefore for a recording the following public function is generated:

public static void Start()
{
    TestModuleRunner.Run(Instance);
}

To play a recording from Visual Studio do something like this.

[TestMethod]
public void PlayRecordingModules()
{
    try
    {
        VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.StartSystemUnderTest.Instance.SutPath
            = SutPath;
        VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.StartSystemUnderTest.Start();
        VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.AddVIP.Start();
        VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.CloseApplication.Start();
    }
    catch (Ranorex.ValidationException)
    {
        Assert.Fail();
    }
}

A Ranorex User Code Module must also implement the ITestModule interface. If no Start() method is provided, the code equivalent to the one above would be:

[TestMethod]
public void PlayUserCodeModules()
{
    VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.StartSystemUnderTest.Instance.SutPath
        = SutPath;
    Ranorex.Core.Testing.TestModuleRunner.Run(
        VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.StartSystemUnderTest.Instance);
    Ranorex.Core.Testing.TestModuleRunner.Run(
        VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.AddVIP.Instance);
    Ranorex.Core.Testing.TestModuleRunner.Run(
        VIPTestSuite.RecorderModules.CloseApplication.Instance);
}

If the Ranorex Test Module test fails an exception will be thrown. If you don’t catch the exception, Visual Studio or MSTest will do so for you.

Ranorex Test Suite

There is no .NET API to access the test cases of a test suite. But one can access them using the command line parameters of the produced executable assembly. Test cases of a test suite are stored in the rxtst file, which is a separate XML file that needs to be deployed with the assembly.

MSTest per default copies test assemblies, but no additional files. This article from MSDN explains how to deploy additional files with MSTest. In short: Double Click on Local.testsettings and go to deployment.
Another alternative could be to provide a full path to the rxtst file:

Ranorex.Core.Testing.TestSuiteRunner.Run(
    typeof(VIPTestSuite.VIPTestSuiteRepository),
    @"/testsuite:C:testsVipTestSuite.rxtst");

But when deploying to different machines one has to care for an absolute path that is valid on all of them.
The alternative to deploying the rxtst file separately I use here is to integrate it as text resource into the VS test assembly. This way there is no need to separately deploy the rxtst file.

1. Right-click on the project and select properties from the context menu
2. In the resources tab click on the blue line in the center to create a resource file
3. From the drop-down “Add Resource” choose “Add New Text File” and give it a name like VipTestSuite
4. Find all occurences of VipTestSuite in the project
5. In the .resx change the file path to
   ..........RanorexRanorexStudio ProjectsSamplesVIPTestSuiteVIPTestSuite.rxtst
   Note: This is the relative path into the Ranorex solution folder. The same file is used for Ranorex and Visual Studio. Take care to use the rxtst file that fits to the referenced VIPTestSuite.exe. They are linked via GUIDs.
6. In the solution explorer remove VipTestSuite.txt that was generated when adding the text resource

Test methods accessing the ranorex test suite file (rxtst) would look like this:

[TestMethod]
public void Test_AddAndDeleteSingleVIP()
{
    int res = Ranorex.Core.Testing.TestSuiteRunner.Run(
        typeof(VIPTestSuite.VIPTestSuiteRepository),
        "/testcase:AddAndDeleteSingleVIP  /param:"StartPath="
        +SutPath+""", Resources.VipTestSuite);
    Assert.AreEqual(res,0);//-1 is return on failure
}

Note: Resources.VipTestSuite is provided as an additional parameter

This conversion can be automated with a script. I have added this as a custom build step in the sample project. Remove it if you don’t have Python installed.

import sys

def rxtst_to_cs(rxtst_file,cs_file):
    """collects all root testcases and
    creates a C# file with a partial class
    containing the corresponding test methods"""
    from xml.etree.ElementTree import ElementTree
    rxtst = ElementTree()
    rxtst.parse(rxtst_file);
    method_template = """

            [TestMethod]
            public void Test_{0}()
            {{
                int res = Ranorex.Core.Testing.TestSuiteRunner.Run(
                    typeof(VIPTestSuite.VIPTestSuiteRepository),
                    "/testcase:{0}  /param:"StartPath="
                    +SutPath+""", Resources.VipTestSuite);
                Assert.AreEqual(res,0);//-1 is return on failure
            }}
    """
    methods = ""
    tests = rxtst.findall("content/testcase")
    methods += 'n'.join(
        [method_template.format(t.get("name")) for t in tests])
    tests = rxtst.findall("content/folder/testcase")
    methods += 'n'.join(
        [method_template.format(t.get("name")) for t in tests])
    tests = rxtst.findall("content/folder/folder/testcase")
    methods += 'n'.join(
        [method_template.format(t.get("name")) for t in tests])
    code_wrapping = """

    using System;
    using System.Text;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Linq;
    using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
    using VIP_VS_Test.Properties;

    namespace VIP_VS_Test
    {{
        public partial class VIPUnitTest
        {{
            {0}
        }}
    }}
    """
    with open(cs_file,'w') as f:
        f.write(code_wrapping.format(methods))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    rxtst_to_cs(sys.argv[1],sys.argv[2])

If you open the Microsoft Report file (trx file) you can also see the details about test failure, because the output of the Ranorex executable is recorded by the Microsoft test driver. In addition those details are also in the Ranorex rxlog file. This file can be rendered with the Internet Explorer, if you rename the extension to xml.