Debugging Failed Tests

In this section we will learn how easy is to debug failing tests.

Friendly error messages

Let's see what nice and friendly error message My Tested ASP.NET Core MVC provides on a failed test. Go to the "ManageControllerTest" and change the redirect action:

.ToAction(nameof(ManageController.LinkLogin));

Run the test, and you will see a detailed error message showing exactly what has failed:

When calling RemoveLogin action in ManageController expected redirect result to have 'LinkLogin' action name, but instead received 'ManageLogins'.

We can see in the above message that the redirect action is actually "ManageLogins" so let's return that value and try something else. Change the "Message" route value property to "Error":

.ContainingRouteValues(new { Error = ManageController.ManageMessageId.Error }));

Run the test again, and you should see:

When calling RemoveLogin action in ManageController expected redirect result route values to have entry with 'Error' key and the provided value, but such was not found.

The library tells us that there is no "Error" key in the redirect route value dictionary. Now bring back the "Message" key to make the test pass again.

Debugging the failing action

If the provided error messages are not enough to diagnose why the test fails, you can always use the good old C# debugger. Put a breakpoint in the action method:

Then click with the right mouse button on the failing test and select "Debug Selected Tests":

You know the drill from here on! :)

Section summary

In this section we learned how helpful and developer-friendly is My Tested ASP.NET Core MVC with failed tests. Later in the tutorial we will also see how easy it is to debug with the "ShouldPassForThe" generic method. But enough about failures and errors. Let's dive into the Controllers testing!