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  1. Unit testing assistance
  2. Test categories

Test categories

Last modified: 21 July 2022

NUnit, MSTest, and xUnit frameworks allow grouping tests and test classes into suites with the Category (NUnit) or TestCategory (MSTest) attribute on the corresponding symbols. xUnit provides the Trait attribute with the similar functionality. ReSharper is aware of these attributes and provides a number of related features.

tip

Another option for grouping tests into suites is to create a new create unit test sessions for each suite.

tip

Unit testing assistance can be extended with other JetBrains .NET products: you can profile unit tests with dotTrace and analyze code coverage of unit tests with dotCover. These products are included in the dotUltimate license.

Browse Test Categories

In the Unit Test Explorer window, you can explore all existing categories in the current solution. To do so, in the Group by selector, choose Categories or Project and Categories. It is also possible to explore categories within a session in the Unit Test Sessions window. You can find the same grouping preferences under the Options selector.

Completion for category names

When you type the name of a category, ReSharper displays all existing and recently used categories, as well as ignored categories in the completion list:

ReSharper: Code completion for unit test categories

Execute all tests in a category

From each test/test class belonging to some category, you can start execution of all tests in this category. To do so, press Alt+Enter or click the action indicator, choose Run/Debug or Run All/Debug All in the action list, and then click the small arrow on the right and click the category name or press Enter:

ReSharper: Executing unit tests in a category

Another option to run all tests in a category is to group tests by category in the Unit Test Explorer window, choose the category node, and then click Run Unit Tests Run Unit Tests Ctrl+U R/ Debug Unit Tests Debug Unit Tests Ctrl+U D on the toolbar.

Ignore categories

If necessary, you can add one or more categories to the ignore list. All tests belonging to these categories will be skipped during the execution of a unit test session. Note that you can still run specific tests from ignored categories individually.

To add a category to the ignore list, type the category name into the Skip tests from categories field on the Tools | Unit Testing | General page of ReSharper options (Alt+R, O). If you enter multiple categories, use comma as the delimiter.

For XUnit tests, where there is no special attribute for categories, list the ignored categories as follows:

  • For attributes like [Trait("One", "Two")], add One [Two] in the settings field.

  • If the first argument of the attribute is Category, for example [Trait("Category", "Three")], then you can add it as Three in the settings field.