Visual Studio Unit Test Tools comes with an another excellent feature to manage unit test as a group /subset, called as “Playlist”. A Playlist is a sub set of unit test methods grouped under some category. This could be a logical subset based on modules, features, layers etc. This is really useful when we want to test very specific set of test cases among all the test methods. In that case, we just create a group of those test cases which may get impacted by our current changes in the actual code, and execute them only to ensure nothing breaks.
You can create a playlist either from the Test Explorer or from the main menu by navigate to Test –> Playlist. Let’s have a look how we can do that.
- Step 1 : Select Unit Test methods together for which you want to create a playlist.
- Step 2 : Navigate to Add to Playlist –> New Playlist
Once you select the “New Playlist”, a Create new file dialog will come up where you need to specify the name of the playlist file.
And That’s all ! You are Done !
You can then group by / run your test based on the playlist you have created.
Once a playlist is selected, all the filters, grouping and other operation on unit test would be applied only to the playlist.
What does a playlist file contains ?
The unit test playlist is nothing but a XML file that contains the list of all added unit test. Here is how a general test file looks like ( Opened in Visual Studio Code )
Adding Unit Test to existing Playlist
To continue adding test to the playlist you should use the top Menu to select “All Tests”, find tests you want to add to the playlist, and simple right click and choose to “Add to Playlist”; now you should see all the testlist of the project and not only the “new Playlist” option.
Hope this helps
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