XUnit - Make your tests more readible

One of the neat tricks that you can do in XUnit is to make your test more readible.

Here is one of my unit tests:

	[Fact]
	public async Task An_Authorized_User_Gets_All_MenuItems()
	{
	//Removed test implementation
	}

view raw XUnitTest.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

And here is how this looks by default in the Test Explorer:

Adding a configuration file

Let’s now add a configuration file to improve the default behavior.

• Add a new JSON file to the root of your test project. Name the file xunit.runner.json.

• Add a schema reference to get autocomplete behavior while editing the file:

  	{
  	"$schema": "https://xunit.net/schema/current/xunit.runner.schema.json"
  	}

  view raw xunit.runner.json hosted with ❤ by GitHub
• Remark: In case of Visual Studio, this is not really necessary as it will recognize the file name and apply the correct schema automatically. 

• Tell the build system to copy the file into the build output directory. Edit your .csproj file and add the following:

  <ItemGroup>
    <Content Include="xunit.runner.json" CopyToOutputDirectory="PreserveNewest" />
  </ItemGroup>

Update the configuration

Let’s now tweak the behavior by changing some settings in the configuration file:

	{
	"$schema": "https://xunit.net/schema/current/xunit.runner.schema.json",
	"methodDisplay": "method",
	"methodDisplayOptions": "all"
	}

view raw xunit.runner.json hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This will make our test list already more readable:

Remark: If you don’t see anything happening, check that you have the latest version of XUnit and XUnit.Runner.VisualStudio installed.

I invite you to check out the documentation for some other options you can tweak: https://xunit.net/docs/configuration-files