Unit Test project vs Console app project for Visual Studio Selenium automated test suite

Question

My team has recently implemented automated build and deployment using Microsoft TFS and we're in the process of automating the functional tests for our application.

However, we have a concern. We know that we can create the automation framework as a Console application project and as a Class library project where we call the classes and methods from a Unit Test project.

What are the benefits of using a Unit Test project in order to achieve our goal of running the tests in automated fashion after an automated build and deployment?

I appreciate your input.

Answer 1

Probably the biggest benefit you'd get from this is if you have the automated test routines linked to TFS Test Cases (managed in MS Test Manager). That will give you automatic reporting of your test cases via Microsoft's test harnesses, complete with results in the MS format (since I'm presuming you'd be running your tests via MSTest.exe)

With a command line application you'd need to do all of that yourself through the TFS API which I can say from experience is not for the faint-hearted (but it can be done).

Even if you don't do the full end-to-end linkage through TFS, using a unit test project rather than a console app gives you the more detailed logging and the "automagic" iteration through external data sources that you'd have to hard-wire in if you did it via a console app.