From a method you can open an editor in which you can define equivalence classes, representatives and test cases. This information is called test model.

The tmdl file (short for test model file) contains the data for the method you want to test. It includes input factors, equivalence classes, representatives and test cases with all it’s values and properties. Edit it with devmate in Visual Studio.

Equivalence class partitioning is a software testing technique that divides the input data of a software unit into partitions of equivalent data from which test cases can be derived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_partitioning

To generate tests with devmate you have to do three steps.

• First you generate a test model for a method by right clicking into the method and choosing ‘Test with devmate’. devmate should open.
• Here you perform the second step. Add input factors, equivalence classes, representatives and use them to generate test cases. For each test case you have to enter the expected value and possible exceptions that are thrown. Optional you can also check for side effects.
• The final step is to generate test code. First select for which framework you want to generate test code (XUnit, NUnit, MSTest). Then click the ‘Generate Test Code’ button in the equivalence class editor.

Yes. We encourage you to check-in the test code into your VCS. devmate allows you to modify generated code and merge any changes in the test model upon newly generating code. You just have to make sure not to touch the test-data in the code itself or dramatically changing the structure of the code.

You can set the value of a string to null by entering the text null. If you want to pass the string “null”, enter the text “null” (with the quotes).

Characters can be passed in two ways. You can either enter a character under single-quotes (e.g. ‘2’) or you can enter the numeric value of a character (e.g. 50). A non-alphanumeric character can only be passed by its numeric value.

We currently don’t support checking of input parameters.

Every method can potentially throw exceptions. For each test case you can therefore define an exception as a potential return value in the footer of each test case next to the ‘Throws:’ label.

Every method parameter that is annotated by ‘ref’ or ‘out’ in C# can potentially have side effects within the method execution. Because of that devmate allows you to check for potential side effects. Each test case therfore has a field ‘Expected Side Effects’.

In the side effects dialog you can check which reference input parameter should be checked for side effects and set the expected value that this parameter should have after the execution of the method.

Choose a method for which you would like to create a boilerplate template. Right click on it and choose ‘Create Boilerplate with devmate’. Select the favoured unit testing framework (XUnit, NUnit, MSTest).

Generating test cases requires at least one positive equivalence class for each input parameter and at least one representative for each equivalence class.

devmate currently supports XUnit, NUnit and MSTest.

Generating code requires that all your test cases have a selected representative for each input factor.

You can create a test model by doing a right click inside a method. Select ‘Test with devmate’. We do not yet support:

• getters and setters for properties
• generic methods or methods in generic classes

Click in the top task bar in Visual Studio on Extensions>devmate>Introduction Video.

Expected side effects for a test case can only be defined if your test case has a selected representative for each input factor.