Introduction to the Windows Phone Unit Test Framework

The API of the Windows Phone UTF is almost the same as the Silverlight Unit Test Framework for the browser. In fact, it is almost a superset of the Microsoft desktop CLR Unit Test Framework. This cross-screen compatibility means that you can run all your existing unit tests just as they are.

With Windows Phone 8, the unit testing story has been substantially improved. Unfortunately, however, tooling support for the Windows Phone UTF remains nonexistent. Unlike the Microsoft desktop UTF, there is no Visual Studio integration. This means you cannot run individual unit tests from Visual Studio as you might with a desktop application. Windows Phone test projects are Windows Phone XAML apps. Therefore, do not bother trying to create a new unit test from the Test menu in Visual Studio, because it is unsupported for Windows Phone.

Although tooling support is absent, all the metadata and assertions, discussed later in this chapter, are identical for both the desktop CLR and Windows Phone UTF. In addition, creating a unit test project is straightforward, as you see in the following section.