How to write to Console Out during execution of an MSTest test

Question

Context  We have some users reporting issues with a file upload feature in our web application  It only happens occasionally and without any special pattern  We have been trying to figure it out for a long time  adding debug information anywhere we can think it might help  crawling the logs etc  but we have not been able to reproduce or figure it out   Problem  I m now trying to reproduce this by using MSTest and WatiN to repeat the operation that is supposed to fail a large number of times  several hundreds   Just to have a clue about how far in the loop the test has gotten  I want to print something like   Console WriteLine String Format  Uploaded file  attempt  0  of  1    i  maxUploads      This does however not appear in the Output window  Now I know that you ll get the console output in the test results  as well as what you output from Debug Writeline etc   but this is not available until after the test has finished  And since my test with hundreds of repetitions could take quite some time  I d like to know how far it has gotten   Question  Is there a way I can get the console output in the Output window during test execution

User · Answer

I had the same issue and I was  Running  the tests  If I instead  Debug  the tests the Debug output shows just fine like all others Trace and Console  I don t know though how to see the output if you  Run  the tests

User · Answer

The Console output is not appearing is because the backend code is not running in the context of the test   You re probably better off using Trace WriteLine  In System Diagnostics  and then adding a trace listener which writes to a file   This topic from MSDN shows a way of doing this     According to Marty Neal s and Dave Anderson s comments    using System  using System Diagnostics        Trace Listeners Add new TextWriterTraceListener Console Out       or Trace Listeners Add new ConsoleTraceListener     Trace WriteLine  Hello World

User · Answer

You better setup a single test and create a performance test from this test  This way you can monitor the progress using the default tool set

User · Answer

I found a solution of my own  I know that Andras answer is probably the most consistent with MSTEST  but I didn t feel like refactoring my code    TestMethod  public void OneIsOne         using  ConsoleRedirector cr   new ConsoleRedirector                  Assert IsFalse cr ToString   Contains  New text                call some method that writes  New text  to stdout            Assert IsTrue cr ToString   Contains  New text               The disposable ConsoleRedirector is defined as   internal class ConsoleRedirector   IDisposable       private StringWriter  consoleOutput   new StringWriter        private TextWriter  originalConsoleOutput      public ConsoleRedirector                 this  originalConsoleOutput   Console Out          Console SetOut  consoleOutput             public void Dispose                 Console SetOut  originalConsoleOutput           Console Write this ToString             this  consoleOutput Dispose              public override string ToString                 return this  consoleOutput ToString

User · Answer

Use the Debug WriteLine  This will display your message in the Output window immediately  The only restriction is that you must run your test in Debug mode    TestMethod  public void TestMethod1         Debug WriteLine  Time  0    DateTime Now       System Threading Thread Sleep 30000       Debug WriteLine  Time  0    DateTime Now       Output

[c#] How to write to Console.Out during execution of an MSTest test

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