Trouble referencing a file in a visual studio project on a unit test

Question

I'm having quite a bit of trouble in resolving an issue dealing with referencing a custom text file in my project. NOTE: the file contains text, but its of a custom type '.rit'

I'm currently building and running some test cases for a new application and one of them involves reading a file that resides in a sample folder of my project called 'TestFiles'. At first, I ran the test locally using the absolute path of the file and it ran with no issues. However, I am using TFS to check in my code and once the test runs in the server it fails immediately because it can't locate the file, which was obvious because I was using an absolute path to a file in my local drive, so I NEED to change how the test accesses this file to make it work both locally and on the server.

I've looked at a look of examples as I was looking for help but none seem to work... I've tried:

DeploymentItem:

      [DeploymentItem(@"TestProject\TestFiles\test file.rit", "TestData")]
    [TestMethod]
    public void LoadFileTest()
    {
        //Assert.IsTrue(File.Exists("test file.rit"));

        var obj = new obj();
        var tstFile = @"TestData\\test file.rit";
        var file = new StreamReader(tstFile);

        obj.OpenRitFileInTextFormat(file);
    }

The hierarchy of the file is: Solution\TestProject\TestFiles\test file.rit and I made sure to set the Copy to Output to "copy always"

Adding it as a Resource:

    //[DeploymentItem(@"TestProject\\TestFiles\\test file.rit", "TestData")]
    [TestMethod]
    public void LoadFileTest()
    {
        //Assert.IsTrue(File.Exists("test file.rit"));

        var obj = new obj();
        var tstFile = Properties.Resources.test_file;
        //this one throws an error however because it says the type of tstFile is now
        //a byte[] instead of a stream reader
        *var file = new StreamReader(tstFile);*

        obj.OpenRitFileInTextFormat(file);
    }

I'm not very experienced in this one, so I might be doing something wrong... If anyone could please enlighten me or give me some guidance as to where else I could look for help I would GREATLY appreciate it!

Thanks,

EDIT: I have found out my TestData folder I'm specifying to be copied in the DeploymentItem path is not being created/copied to the Out folder of the test run. I'm starting to think this is more of a settings file problem, here's the contents of my settings file:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <RunSettings>
     <!-- Configurations that affect the Test Framework -->
     <RunConfiguration>
     <!-- Path relative to solution directory -->
     <ResultsDirectory>.\TestResults</ResultsDirectory>

      <!-- [x86] | x64  
       - You can also change it from menu Test, Test Settings, Default Processor Architecture -->
      <TargetPlatform>x86</TargetPlatform>

      <!-- Framework35 | [Framework40] | Framework45 -->
      <TargetFrameworkVersion>Framework40</TargetFrameworkVersion>
       </RunConfiguration>

      <!-- Configurations for data collectors -->
      <DataCollectionRunSettings>
      <DataCollectors>
      <DataCollector friendlyName="Code Coverage"         uri="datacollector://Microsoft/CodeCoverage/2.0" assemblyQualifiedName="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Coverage.DynamicCoverageDataCollector, Microsoft.VisualStudio.TraceCollector, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a">
       <Configuration>
        <CodeCoverage>
           <ModulePaths>
             <Exclude>
               <ModulePath>.*CPPUnitTestFramework.*</ModulePath>
            </Exclude>
          </ModulePaths>
         </CodeCoverage>
       </Configuration>
      </DataCollector>

      </DataCollectors>
      </DataCollectionRunSettings>

       <!-- Adapter Specific sections -->

       <!-- MSTest adapter -->
       <MSTest>
       <MapInconclusiveToFailed>True</MapInconclusiveToFailed>
       <CaptureTraceOutput>false</CaptureTraceOutput>
       <DeleteDeploymentDirectoryAfterTestRunIsComplete>False</DeleteDeploymentDirectoryAfterTestRunIsComplete>
       <DeploymentEnabled>True</DeploymentEnabled>
     </MSTest>


    </RunSettings>

Answer 1

When using the @ modifier you shouldn't escape the backslashes. So use either [DeploymentItem("TestProject\\TestFiles\\test file.rit", "TestData")] or [DeploymentItem(@"TestProject\TestFiles\test file.rit", "TestData")]. The second version is preferable.

From my experience, if a file is added to the project at its root level, then it can be referenced just by [DeploymentItem("file.xyz")] in the test case. So in your case [DeploymentItem(@"TestFiles\test file.rit", "TestData")] should be fine.

You also need to remember to "Enable deployment" in "Solution items" -> Local.testsettings: