Hands-On Lab

Testing and Debugging SharePoint 2010

Applications with Visual Studio 2012


Lab version: 11.0.60315.01 Update 2
Last updated: 4/9/2013















CONTENTS

OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................................................... 3
EXERCISE 1: CREATING UNIT TESTS USING THE SHAREPOINT EMULATOR ................................... 5
EXERCISE 2: INTELLITRACE SUPPORT FOR SHAREPOINT ............................................................... 17
EXERCISE 3: WEB AND LOAD TESTING SHAREPOINT APPLICATIONS ........................................... 25

Overview
In this lab, you will learn about new features provided in Update 1 and 2 that make testing and
debugging SharePoint applications easier, thereby helping to improve the quality and scalability of your
product. Although this lab walks through testing and debugging a SharePoint 2010 instance, the steps
generally apply to SharePoint 2013 also.

Prerequisites
In order to complete this lab you will need the Visual Studio 2012 virtual machine provided by Microsoft.
For more information on acquiring and using this virtual machine, please see this blog post.
Lab Updates
This lab highlights features and enhancements introduced with Visual Studio 2012 Update 1, although
some lab steps may also highlight features that were in place prior to the update. Update 1 specific
features and enhancements are specifically called out as they are introduced.
Exercises
This hands-on lab includes the following exercises:
Creating Unit Tests using the SharePoint Emulator
IntelliTrace Support for SharePoint
Web and Load Testing SharePoint Applications

Estimated time to complete this lab: 60 minutes.



Exercise 1: Creating Unit Tests using the
SharePoint Emulator
In this exercise, you will learn how to take advantage of the SharePoint Emulator in your unit tests in
order to help remove unnecessary dependencies to SharePoint and the SharePoint API, thereby isolating
your tests and making sure that you are testing the code you want.
Log in as Adam. All user passwords are P2ssw0rd.
Open the AppointmentsWebPart solution file from
C:\SharePointDemos\AppointmentsWebPart in Visual Studio 2012.

Figure 1
Loading sample solution

This solution contains a web part that allows a user to book an appointment. Lets take a look at
it in action to get an idea of what it does. Right-click on the AppointmentsWebPart project in
Solution Explorer and select Deploy to deploy and activate the feature on the local SharePoint
server.

Figure 2
Deploying the web part

Open Internet Explorer and navigate to http://vsalm/sites/team.

Figure 3
SharePoint demo site

Select the Edit button to edit the page.

Figure 4
Edit button location

Place the cursor on the page between the paragraph of text and the Shared Documents section.

Figure 5
Selecting insert location

Select the Insert tab.

Figure 6
Insert tab location

Select the Web Part button to add in the custom web part.

Figure 7
Web Part button

Select the Custom category, the AppointmentsWebPart and then select the Add button to add
it to the page.

Figure 8
Adding in the web part

Select the Save & Close button.

Figure 9
Save and close

The web part expects there to be a list named Appointments, so go ahead and click on the Lists
link to create one.

Figure 10
Navigate to Lists

Select the Create button.

Figure 11
Create new list button

Select the Appointments type, enter a name of Appointments, and select the Create button.

Figure 12
Creating Appointments list

Select the Browse button and then select the Team link in the navigation bar to return to the
default page.

Figure 13
Return to home page

Manually test the appointment web part by entering some test data into the fields and then
select the Submit button.

Figure 14
Testing the Appointments web part

Return to the Appointments list and note that the appointment has been added as expected.

Figure 15
New appointment

Now lets take a look at how we can take advantage of the SharePoint Emulator and Microsoft
Fakes Framework to develop and execute unit tests. The SharePoint Emulator code base is
installed via NuGet. Return to Visual Studio, right-click on the AppointmentsWebPart.Tests
project and select the Manage NuGet Packages option.

Figure 16
Manage NuGet packages

You should see that the Microsoft.SharePoint.Emulators package is already installed for the
test project. The package downloads needed assemblies and adds the appropriate references to
the project for you.

Figure 17
Microsoft.SharePoint.Emulators already added to project

Close the Manage NuGet Packages window.
Load the UnitTest1.cs file from the AppointmentsWebPart.Tests project and navigate to the
first test method that starts with ScheduleAppointment This test method uses the
SharePoint Emulator to create a test list, add fields to it, and use the web part to test the
scheduling of an appointment.

Figure 18
Unit test definition

Most of what you see looks identical to normal SharePoint code, however it is all wrapped in a
Using statement with an instance of SharePointEmulationScope. This is responsible for
redirecting normal SharePoint calls to the shims provided by the emulator.

Figure 19
Use of SharePointEmulationScope

Right-click somewhere within the test definition and select Run Tests.

Figure 20
Run unit test

Note that this test reports success.

Figure 21
Successful unit test run with SharePoint Emulator

Note: If the unit test unexpectedly fails, please restart Visual Studio and try again.

Scroll down to the second test method and take a look at what it does. It creates a list, inserts
test appointments into the list, and then calls the GetAppointmentsForToday method from the
web part under test to ensure that appointments for the current date are returned. It also uses
the SharePointEmulationScope as before.

Figure 22
Unit test definition

As you work with the SharePoint Emulator, you may run into circumstances where features
have not yet been implemented. In these cases, expect to see a NotSupportedException occur
during test runs with information about the unimplemented shim. It turns out that the
GetAppointmentsForToday method on the web part under test makes use of the
SPList.GetItems method, which will throw a NotSupportedException when running the version
of the SharePoint Emulator installed on this VM.
Fortunately, it is straightforward to specify an implementation of the missing shim, as
evidenced by the following code from the test method. Note that there is an explicit test to run
this code block when running in emulation mode.

Figure 23
Implementing a shim

Note: This shim implementation simply grabs the first item from the list for the purposes of
this demo, regardless of the query passed in. If you would like to learn more about the
Microsoft Fakes Framework, please see the MSDN documentation here.

Right-click somewhere within the test definition and select Run Tests to make sure it works as
expected. The result should be that the unit test passes.

Figure 24
Unit test results

You can also run your unit tests against a real SharePoint instance by changing the emulation
mode to bypass all shims and directly call into the original SharePoint assembly. Scroll to the top
of the GetAppointments test method and change EmulationMode.Enabled to
EmulationMode.Passthrough.

Figure 25
Configuring unit test to pass through the emulator

Note: In a real-world scenario, you would likely want to re-use your unit test code in both
emulated and passthrough modes. To do this, you could define the emulation mode to use at
the test class level and use test initialize and cleanup to create and destroy the scope.
Automation of the selected emulation mode could then be implemented using preprocessor
directives, with the definition provided in the test project file or via the build command line.
For more information, please see the MSDN SharePoint Emulator article here.

Right-click somewhere within the test definition and select Run Tests once again. This time the
test will run against a real SharePoint instance.

Figure 26
Unit test passing through the emulator (note the time difference)


Exercise 2: IntelliTrace Support for
SharePoint
In this exercise, you will learn about Update 1 improvements made to IntelliTrace that improve the
debugging experience of SharePoint applications.
Log in as Adam. All user passwords are P2ssw0rd.
Open the SharePointProject1 solution file from c:\SharePointDemos\SharePointProject1 in
Visual Studio 2012.

Figure 27
Loading sample solution

Open WebPart1.cs from Solution Explorer. Note that this simple web part simply identifies the
current user name and renders some output HTML.

Figure 28
Sample web part code

Right-click on the SharePointProject1 project and select Deploy to deploy and activate the
feature on the local SharePoint server.
Lets go ahead and take a look at this web part in action. Open Internet Explorer and navigate to
http://vsalm/sites/team.
Select the Site Pages link.

Figure 29
Navigating to Site Pages

Select the Site Actions drop-down and then select New Page.

Figure 30
Creating a new test page

Use IntelliTrace Demo for the new page name and then select Create.

Figure 31
Creating a new test page

Select the Insert tab.

Figure 32
Inserting the web part

Select the Web Part button to add in the custom web part.

Figure 33
Inserting the web part

Select the Custom category, the SharePointProject1 web part and then select the Add button
to add it to the page.

Figure 34
Inserting the web part

Select the Save and Close button.

Figure 35
Save changes

Here we can see that the web part is deployed and functional.

Figure 36
Custom web part in action

Now lets assume that this web part has been working for some time but that an additional
feature has been added in and users are now reporting intermittent errors. Return to Visual
Studio and uncomment the line that throws an exception.

Figure 37
Artificially introducing an exception for demo

Right-click on the SharePointProject1 project and select Deploy to deploy the updated web
part.
At this point, you can use IntelliTrace to collect diagnostic data for SharePoint using the
IntelliTrace PowerShell module. Start IntelliTrace by executing the StartIntelliTraceDemo.cmd
script found in C:\SharePointDemos.

Figure 38
Start IntelliTrace session

Note: If you would like to learn more about how to use IntelliTrace in a production
environment, including the details involved with these scripts, please see the Diagnosing
Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 2012 lab.

After IntelliTrace has started, return to Internet Explorer and refresh the IntelliTrace Demo
page. An error page should now be displayed by SharePoint. This is something that an end user
would likely see and then report back to the development team. Select the Correlation ID and
then press Ctrl + C to copy it to the clipboard.

Figure 39
Typical SharePoint error showing correlation ID

Execute the StopIntelliTraceDemo.cmd script to stop IntelliTrace.

Figure 40
Stop IntelliTrace session

The scripts that executed IntelliTrace collection were configured to output data to
C:\LogFileLocation. Double-click on the IntelliTrace file found at that location to load it in Visual
Studio.

Figure 41
IntelliTrace log file

In the IntelliTrace Summary view, note that there is an Analysis section at the top that shows
an unhandled exception. We could start debugging the unhandled exception by clicking on the
Debug Exception button, but lets start by pasting the Correlation ID we received from our end
user in to the blank text box (use Ctrl+V) to review matching web requests. Select the View
Details button.

Figure 42
Viewing web request details associated with Correlation ID

Here we can see request information associated with the SharePoint Correlation ID. We can see
the target URL, user agent, and so on. Select the Start Debugging button.

Figure 43
Web request details

Close the web request details window and return to the IntelliTrace file.
Select the Debug Exception button to the right of the unhandled exception.

Figure 44
Start debugging the unhandled exception

Once Visual Studio is in debug mode, you should see that the location of the unhandled
exception is highlighted in the WebPart1.cs source file and that you have the normal IntelliTrace
debugging tools at your disposal.

Figure 45
IntelliTrace debugging


Exercise 3: Web and Load Testing
SharePoint Applications
In this exercise, you will learn about how Update 1 has improved the Visual Studio 2012 web and load
testing tools. To learn more about web and load testing in general, please see the Introduction to Web
Performance and Load Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate 2012.
Log in as Adam. All user passwords are P2ssw0rd.
Open the SP_Web_LoadTest_Demo solution file from
c:\SharePointDemos\WebAndLoadTestProject1 in Visual Studio 2012.

Figure 46
Loading sample solution

This solution contains a test project with two web tests and a load test. We will take a closer
look at these in a moment.

Figure 47
Sample web and load test project

Prior to Update 1, it was certainly possible to record web tests against SharePoint, but it
required you to significantly hand edit the recording to do things such as remove extraneous
requests and parameterize the site name. Update 1 performs more of these tedious tasks
automatically, and this is configurable. View the available options by selecting Tools | Options |
Web Performance Test Tools | Web Test | SharePoint in the main menu of Visual Studio.

Figure 48
SharePoint web test options (showing defaults)

After taking a look at the default options for SharePoint web tests, press Escape to exit the
Options window.
Open Upload.webtest in the web test editor. This web test was recorded by navigating to a
SharePoint site, loading the Shared Documents library, and uploading a document.

Figure 49
Upload web test definition

Note that the site name was automatically parameterized for us in all of the recorded requests.
This makes it easy to data drive the site name if desired.

Figure 50
Site name was automatically parameterized

Expand the second request in the list and note that a SharePoint specific extraction rule was
automatically added in to grab the list ID and store it as a context parameter.

Figure 51
SharePoint extraction rule to find list ID


Figure 52
Properties of extraction rule

The list ID context parameter is then used in subsequent requests, for example in the request to
Upload.aspx.

Figure 53
Use of list ID context parameter

The actual file that is uploaded during the test run is parameterized as well. Expand the second
web request to Upload.aspx (there are two) and scroll to the bottom of the Form Post
Parameters and select last option, which is a File Upload Parameter. This shows that when we
run the web test, a unique filename will be used when uploading the Doc2.doc file.

Figure 54
File Upload Parameter

In addition to a couple of new validation rules, Update 1 also provides a number of useful
extraction rules that you can use with your SharePoint web requests. Right-click on one of the
web requests and select the Add Extraction Rule option.

Figure 55
Location of Add Extraction Rule option

The additional SharePoint extraction rules allow you to do things like find specific list and
document IDs, calendar dates, values of text boxes, workflow instance IDs, and so on.

Figure 56
New SharePoint extraction rules

Press the Escape key to close the Add Extraction Rule window.
Double-click on Download.webtest in Solution Explorer to load it in the web test editor. This
web test was recorded by navigating to a SharePoint site, loading the Shared Documents library,
and downloading a specific document. After the test was recorded, a SharePoint extraction rule
was added to find the document item and store it as a context parameter.

Figure 57
Use of a SharePoint extraction rule to find a document item

In the web request to Download.aspx, note that one of the query string parameters refers to
the document previously extracted.

Figure 58
Use of document reference previously extracted

Double-click on SPLoadTest1.loadtest from Solution Explorer to load it in the load test editor.

Figure 59
Load test definition

This is a basic load test definition that will spend half of the time on the Download web test and
the other half on the Upload web test. Note that Update 1 provides a new counter set
definition, SharePoint 2012 WFE.

Figure 60
SharePoint Counter Set

Go ahead and run the load test to see it in action by selecting the Run Load Test button. The
load test is configured to run for 1 minute.

Figure 61
Location of Run Load Test button

After the results summary displays, you can see the individual page result details if you scroll
down. To visualize the performance details over time, you can also try the Graphs view.

Figure 62
Summary results of load test


Figure 63
Graph view of load test results



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