Question

Does anyone have an example of how to unit test an async method in a Windows 8 Metro application, to ensure that it throws the required exception?

Given a class with an async method

public static class AsyncMathsStatic
{
    private const int DELAY = 500;

    public static async Task<int> Divide(int A, int B)
    {
        await Task.Delay(DELAY);
        if (B == 0)
            throw new DivideByZeroException();
        else
            return A / B;
    }
}

I want to write a test method using the new Async.ExpectsException construction. I’ve tried :-

[TestMethod]
public void DivideTest1()
{
    Assert.ThrowsException<DivideByZeroException>(async () => { int Result = await AsyncMathsStatic.Divide(4, 0); });
}

but of course the test doesn’t wait for the async method to complete, and so results in a failed test that the exception hasn’t been thrown.

Answer 1

You can use an async Task unit test with the regular ExpectedExceptionAttribute:

[TestMethod]
[ExpectedException(typeof(DivideByZeroException))]
public async Task DivideTest1()
{
  int Result = await AsyncMathsStatic.Divide(4, 0);
}

Update from comment: ExpectedExceptionAttribute on Win8 unit test projects has been replaced with Assert.ThrowsException, which is nicely undocumented AFAICT. This is a good change design-wise, but I don’t know why it’s only supported on Win8.

Well, assuming that there’s no async-compatible Assert.ThrowsException (I can’t tell if there is one or not due to lack of documentation), you could build one yourself:

public static class AssertEx
{
  public async Task ThrowsExceptionAsync<TException>(Func<Task> code)
  {
    try
    {
      await code();
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
      if (ex.GetType() == typeof(TException))
        return;
      throw new AssertFailedException("Incorrect type; expected ... got ...", ex);
    }

    throw new AssertFailedException("Did not see expected exception ...");
  }
}

and then use it as such:

[TestMethod]
public async Task DivideTest1()
{
  await AssertEx.ThrowsException<DivideByZeroException>(async () => { 
      int Result = await AsyncMathsStatic.Divide(4, 0);
  });
}

Note that my example here is just doing an exact check for the exception type; you may prefer to allow descendant types as well.

Update 2012-11-29: Opened a UserVoice suggestion to add this to Visual Studio.