How to create an NUnit test project that is also a self-running console app .exe

Create your NUnit Test project as a Windows Console Application, not as a Class Library.

Then make your main Program look like this:

[TestFixture]
public class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        NUnit.ConsoleRunner.Runner.Main(
            new[]{Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location }
            );
    }

    [TestCase("Aa - Bb")]
    public void WhenValidatingForename_should_accept_valid_characters(string validInput)
    {
        var result= new ClassUnderTest().Validate(validInput);
        Assert.IsTrue(result);
    }

    [TestCase("X<")]
    public void WhenValidatingForename_should_reject_invalid_characters(string invalidInput)
    {
        var result= new ClassUnderTest().Validate(invalidInput);
        Assert.IsFalse(result);
    }
}

Then, add a reference not only to nunit.framework.dll but also to nunit-console-runner.dll

You now have a self-running executable that runs all your tests, but still behaves in the usual way in a build script, or when running tests inside Visual Studio with TestRunner or Resharper or similar.
NB You may need to check if your build scripts are hard-coded to expect a Test project to be a .dll.

5 thoughts on “How to create an NUnit test project that is also a self-running console app .exe”

Killoran Fiander says:

4th February 2020 at 10:20 pm

I am in the process of figuring this part out I am using VS2019 Community Edition and I can tell the coding is different now then back in 2012.
I have about 70 NUnit test classes set up for Selenium Automated testing on a website using
Chrome, IE and Mozilla. Could you please help update me on what I need to do?
1. Chris F Carroll says:
  
  8th February 2020 at 2:29 pm
  
  Sorry I haven’t used selenium in NUnit for a few years, but if you got to this page from googling, add ‘selenium’ to your search?
Swapnil says:

15th April 2020 at 6:09 pm

Hi Chris,

Is it possible to create standalone executable tests. I am having one solution with two projects where project 1 has all required classes used by Nunit test which are placed Project 2.

Thanks in advance!

Thanks,
Swapnil
1. Chris F Carroll says:
  
  22nd April 2020 at 4:34 pm
  
  Hi Swapnil, that’s pretty much what this blog post does? Although with dotnet core there is no need anymore since `dotnet test …` will do it.
Adam says:

4th May 2020 at 2:26 pm

Hi Chris,

I’m looking for the right way to run specific NUnit tests from the NUnit console. I’ve created in VS a Console Application that contains all the tests classes, but it seems that I can run only one file (in this case – the .csproj file) which runs all the tests in the project at once. What CLI command should I use in order to select and run a specific test in the project?

Thanks!
Adam

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5 thoughts on “How to create an NUnit test project that is also a self-running console app .exe”

How to create an NUnit test project that…