Problem with reflection in Unit/Integration tests

Question

Hi

I´m dynamically creating an instance of a class with reflection and this works fine, except when trying to do this through unit testing - I´m using the MS testing framework.
I get the familiar error of: "Could not load file or assembly 'Assy' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified"
I have copied the dll into the bin\debug bin of the Unit test project - is this not the correct place to put it?

string assyName = "Go.Data.SqlServer";
string typeName = "GoMolaMola.Data.SqlServer.DataProviderFactory";

Assembly assy = Assembly.Load( assyName );
object o = assy.CreateInstance( typeName );

Any ideas? I'm new to unit testing and any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

For cases like this, when loading the DLL dynamically is needed from the Unit Testing, I have a post-build event that copies the DLL to that directory. I'd love to know if there's another way to do it. That was the only way that worked for me :(

To edit a Post-Build, right-click over the project, go to Build events, and place the copy, like this, in the Post-Build event command line:

copy $(TargetPath) "$(SolutionDir)yourDir\$(TargetFileName)"

Answer 2

The bin/Debug folder is not where the unit tests run. Visual Studio will copy the output of your unit test compilation to a TestResults folder (typically keeping the last five test runs, each with a timestamp embedded in the folder name) and run the unit tests there.

If you want the .DLL in that folder, either create a reference to the .DLL from your test project, or use the DeploymentItem attribute to make sure the item is copied to the test directory.