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At my organization we use a RESTful architechture for our API. I am creating automated unit tests that can be run after every nightly build. Each API call returns an XML string which i then deserialize into a C# object. Is there a way to dynamically generate these classes, or do i manually have to create a class for every object that will be instantiated?

Secondly, is there a way to return all database values to the way they were before these tests were run. I know i can setup a test database where the database refreshes at a certain time every night but i was wondering if there was any way to return the database to it initial state before the tests from the test project itself.

Lastly, Does anyone know how to add a new line before my name? lol :)

Thanks, Hernando Hoyos

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2 Answers 2

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Barring some hard-core Reflection Emit you'll have to create classes for each XML object. Lucklily for you there's the XSD tool that ships with Visual Studio so you can generate these classes quick&dirty.

Given your task - unit testing - you can always skip the deserialization and use linq to xml to query the results for the particular thing you're testing in a more targeted manner. If your every unit test cares about every field of the result then you're doing it wrong anyway. I'd definitely go with linq in your case as it will spare you the need to constantly update your model (doesn't seem you're reusing the app models)

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Two options.

  1. Check out DynamicXml (http://nuget.org/packages/netfx-System.Xml.DynamicXml/) does exactly what you ask.
  2. Read the response in to an XPathDocument, and then execute your unit tests against the document using XPaths: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xpath.xpathdocument.aspx

The benefit of the second option being it's not so tightly bound to C# as XPath is cross platform where as DynamicXML is C# only.

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The only issue that i see is that using these types of solutions the classes are being generated based on the xml being returned. Therefore, negating the purpose of the unit test i am conducting....I think my best bet is to just write out every class. – hfrog713 Jun 3 '13 at 15:50

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