Windows Developer Power Tools

10.11 Unit Testing Your GUI with NUnitForms

Unit testing and test-driven development are increasingly being used to improve software reliability and simplify code design. However, it remains less common for developers to write unit tests for the user-interface components of their applications. NUnitForms, originally developed by Luke Maxon, makes it easy to test this part of your application. The API allows you to interact with your Windows Forms and control classes from a unit-test suite, verifying their proper behavior, state, and interactions.

NUnitForms at a Glance
Tool	NUnitForms
Version covered	1.3, 2.0 beta
Home page	http://nunitforms.sourceforge.net
Power Tools page	http://www.windevpowertools.com/tools/37
Summary	Makes it easy to write automated unit tests for your Windows Forms and control classes
License type	BSD
Online resources	Unit-test examples, forums, bug tracker, mailing list
Supported Frameworks	.NET 1.1, 2.0
Related tools in this book	NUnit

Getting Started

NUnitForms is a standalone testing framework. You don’t need any other test framework.

Source and binary downloads are available from the Download link at the tool’s home page. To use the binaries, simply run the installer or copy the supplied .dll files into your project’s library directory. Reference NUnitForms.dll from your unit-test project, and then you can write and execute unit tests in the usual way.

Here is an example of ...