BACKGROUND
- I am automating an PowerPoint 2007 via C#
- I am writing unittests using the built-in unit testing of Visual Studio (Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting) for my code
- I am well relatively experienced in automating the Office 2007 apps
MY PROBLEM
- When I run my unit tests, the first unit test method runs fine, all after that have an error concerning a detached RCW
- I am creating a static instance of PowerPoint for the test methods to share, but it seems like the application RCW is getting detached after the first test method is run
THE SOURCE CODE
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
namespace TestDemo
{
[TestClass]
public class UnitTest1
{
private static Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.ApplicationClass
g_app = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.ApplicationClass();
private TestContext testContextInstance;
public TestContext TestContext
{
get
{
return testContextInstance;
}
set
{
testContextInstance = value;
}
}
[TestMethod]
public void Test01()
{
g_app.Visible = Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoCTrue;
}
[TestMethod]
public void Test02()
{
g_app.Visible = Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoCTrue;
}
}
}
THE ERROR MESSAGE
Test method TestDemo.UnitTest1.Test02 threw exception:
System.Runtime.InteropServices.InvalidComObjectException: COM
object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used..
This message comes on the line where the PowerPoint instance is used (when I set the Visible property)
WHAT I HAVE TRIED
- The order of the unittests does not change the behavior
- The same problem occurs with Word 2007, Visio 2007, etc.
- When writing testcases with NUNIT I don't get these problem - obviously something is different about how visual studio runs unit tests (not implying VS is incorrect, just pointing out it is different from NUNIT)
- It has nothing to do with the Visible property - any usage of a method or property will cause this issue
- I have tried using the attributes AssemblyInitialize and ClassInitialize to create the instance but nothing has worked
- Googled & Binged - no clear answer that helps me
COMMENTS
- I could switch to NUNIT, but would prefer to keep using Visual Studio's native unit test framework
MY QUESTION
- How can I successfully create an single instance of PowerPoint 2007 that will be shared among all the TestMethods
- If you can provide insight into why this is happening, I would be grateful.
SOLVED (THANKS TO ALCONJA)
- I followed his advice to modify the .testrunconfig and it worked.