Service level tests with the .NET Execution Environment (DNX)

While writing a fairly simple RESTful service with ASP.NET 5, I started to leverage the ease of self-hosting with the .NET Execution Environment (DNX) by executing service-level tests as part of the automated build. I use Powershell for the build script. I first publish the service to a temporary directory, start it in a background thread, and perform the actual tests.

function Invoke-Build {
    dnu publish .\src\Service\project.json --out .\tmp\service --no-source --configuration Release --quiet
}

function Run-ServiceTests {
    # start the service in the background
    $cwd = Get-Location
    Start-Job -Name MyServiceName -ScriptBlock ({param($path)
        Set-Location -Path $path
        .\tmp\service\web.cmd
    }) -ArgumentList $cwd

    # wait until the service is started; instead of waiting for a random time, ping the service until it starts responding
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 5

    # run the service tests
    dnx -p .\test\ServiceTests\project.json test

    # stop the job and also write the output
    Get-Job -Name LabelPrintingService | Stop-Job
    Get-Job -Name LabelPrintingService | Receive-Job
}

Invoke-Build
Run-ServiceTests

function Invoke-Build {

dnu publish .\src\Service\project.json --out .\tmp\service --no-source --configuration Release --quiet

}

function Run-ServiceTests {

# start the service in the background

$cwd = Get-Location

Start-Job -Name MyServiceName -ScriptBlock ({param($path)

Set-Location -Path $path

.\tmp\service\web.cmd

}) -ArgumentList $cwd

# wait until the service is started; instead of waiting for a random time, ping the service until it starts responding

Start-Sleep -Seconds 5

# run the service tests

dnx -p .\test\ServiceTests\project.json test

# stop the job and also write the output

Get-Job -Name LabelPrintingService | Stop-Job

Get-Job -Name LabelPrintingService | Receive-Job

}

Invoke-Build

Run-ServiceTests

With these few lines of code I am able to validate the service’s health after every commit, and notably running these set of tests as part of a pull-request build before being merged to the main line.

One example where I used such a build script is the xUnit2NUnit web service. The source code can be found on github, and a description in a separate blog post.