What’s New in ApprovalTests .Net v.18?

1. FrontLoadedReporter
2. IEnviromentAwareReport Upgrades
3. CodeCompareReporter
4. DictionarySupport
5. EF and Mvc3 additions
6. Bug Fixes

FrontLoadedReporter Attribute (For Build Systems)

You can now add the following code to your assembly.

[assembly: FrontLoadedReporter(typeof(NCrunchReporter))]

This is only allowed at the assembly level, and must be a IEnvironmentAwareReporter. If the reporter is allowed in the current environment, it will circumvent all other reporters. This is very useful for Build Systems where you want to override the behavior of the reporters.

IEnvironmentAwareReporter is file specific (better composition)

The IEnvironmentAwareReporter interface has changed from

bool IsWorkingInThisEnvironment();

to

bool IsWorkingInThisEnvironment(string forFile);

this allows for better composition of reporters. For example I can now combine DiffReporters that only do text with DiffReporters that do images. If you have an Image it will fall thru to the ImageReporter even if the TextDiff Program is on your system.

This is especially nice for…

CodeCompareReporter

My new favorite text diff tool is Code Compare, mainly because it integrates directly into Visual Studio 2010. You can download it here (it’s free)

Dictionary Support

var map = new Dictionary<string, string>(){
{"Caption", "Mal"},
{"Pilot", "Wash"},
{"Companion", "Inara"}  };
Approvals.VerifyAll(map);

This will now create the expected approval result. I don’t know how this didn’t exist from the very start. It is worth noting that keys will be presented in their natural ordering (to allow consistency.)

EF and Mvc3

I added a Mock Saver, LambdaLoader & SingleLambdaLoader to the Enitity Framework support.
I also added .Explict to the Mvc3 Toolkit. I will make videos about this approach soon.

Bug Fixes

There were 2 bugs that got fixed this round.
64-bit machines didn’t launch 32-bit Reporters.
XUnit Reporter didn’t invoke the right Equals Method.

Both are fixed now.