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c#xmlunit-testingxml-deserialization
cutthejargon
cutthejargon

Reputation: 33

Unit testing XML deserialisation

I am new to unit testing and I am wondering what would be the best practices for unit testing xml deserialisation.

Consider the following xml:

<people>
  <person id="1">
    <name>Joe</name>
    <age>28</age>
  </person>
  <person id="2">
    <name>Jack</name>
    <age>38</age>
  </person>
</people>

And the following model class for the people:

    [XmlRoot(ElementName ="people")]
    public class People
    {
        public People() { PeopleList = new List<Person>(); }

        [XmlElement("person")]
        public List<Person> PeopleList { get; set; }
    }

    public class Person
    {
        [XmlAttribute("id")]
        public int id { get; set; }

        [XmlElement("name")]
        public string Name { get; set; }

        [XmlElement("age")]
        public int Age { get; set; }
    }

I deserialize the xml using:

        public List<Person> GetListOfPeople()
        {
            People plist = new People();

            string content;
            using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(manager.Open("People.xml")))
            {
                var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(People));
                plist = (People)serializer.Deserialize(sr);
            }


            return plist.PeopleList;
        }

What would be the best methods to unit test the GetListOfPeople method above?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2225

Answers (1)

Krishna Chaithanya Muthyala
Krishna Chaithanya Muthyala

Reputation: 651

If you can change your method to take an xml file as an input parameter, you can have a sample xml file created and added to your test project. Since you know the values of your xml file, you can start comparing the values directly.

Considering you'll use the sample file you provided in your test, you can verify like this:

var persons = x.GetListOfPeople("sample.xml");
Assert.AreEqual("Joe", persons[0].Name);
Assert.AreEqual(38, persons[1].Age);

If the xml file is coming to your code from some source and you think it couldn't be following your xml schema all the time, then probably you can create some sample xml files again which violate your schema and prepare tests to call your method which should throw some exception if schema is not correct.

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 2

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