Object Test Bench Overview

Today I'ld like to talk a bit about the Object Test Bench (hereforth named OTB for the sake of simplicity). It seems to be one of most underrated visual studio feature. Most developers I know have never used it or used it only once.
Microsoft states that the OTB purpose is:

• Teaching object-oriented programming concepts without going into language syntax
• Providing a lightweight testing tool designed for academic and hobbyist programmers to use on small and simple projects
• Shortening the write-debug-rewrite loop
• Testing simple classes and their methods
• Discovering the behavior of a library API quickly

I find it particularly useful to perform some quick and simple tests whose execution depends only upon a simple (or non-existant) object graph.

OTB operations are acessible from the "Class View" and the "Class Designer". Most of the times we don't have a class diagram to interact with the classes, so I end up using Class View most of the times.

Here's a practical example. Say you have 3 classes: Message, MessageProcessor and ProcessedData. The MessageProcessor handles a Message instance to create a ProcessedData instance. If you suspect the MessageProcessor as a bug and wish to debug it, you just need to create a Message instance, a MessageProcessor instance and invoke the method that handlers the Message. Depending on what you wish to debug, you may just inspect the output (a ProcessedData instance) or you may set a few breakpoints in the MessageProcessor class to better diagnose what's happening. Here's a few screenshots that show how this can be done in the OTB.

Right-click the target class in Class View and Choose "Create Instance". In this case there is a single constructor, but there could be other overloaded constructors. Also note that this menu also allows you to invoke static methods of this class

Whenever you create a new instance a dialog shows up, allowing you to define the name of the create instance. If the constructor had parameters, it would also request you to enter the constructor parameters

The OTB after creating a Message and a MessageProcessor instance. Invoking the ProcessMessage method in the MessageProcessor instance

When you invoke a method with parameters, you're presented with a dialog prompting you to specify the method parameters. Notice that in the value dropdown you're allowed to select from the existing locals in the OTB. You can also enter the value yourself.

When the method has a return value you're allowed to save and name the object

The OTB allows you to inspect these objects by hovering

You can also inspect/use the OTB locals in the Immediate window by using the name you've previously specified

There are some caveats that stop some users from using OTB at all. One of the most anoying is that the project whose classes you want to test in the OTB have to be set as the start up project of the solution. I find myself setting the project I want to test as the start up project (even though sometimes it's a class library) just so that I can use the OTB. Despite these caveats, OTB is overall a nice feature.