Question

Quick question, I’m using the Visual Studio’s testing framework for unit testing. Just wondering what’s the difference between using the constructor to do initialization work vs. having a method with [TestInitialize()] attribute?

Answer 1

This post gives an overview of the different methods. As you can see, the ctor is called immediately before the ClassInitialize (only once, of course) and TestInitialize.

So put stuff that requires code in ClassInitialize in your TestInitialize method. Everything that should be set up before ClassInitialize goes in the ctor.

Obviously, TestInitialize content will be executed once before each test. The corresponding method to close after each test is TestCleanup. For classes, use ClassCleanup. The same thing exists for assemblies as well (AssemblyInitialize/Cleanup).

Further reading