Visual Studio / Reflection / Serialization: Can I export values from a debug session to use them for unit testing?

Question

I had to write many dozens of lines of code (see here: https://dotnetfiddle.net/RiVx2E) to generate a few lines of sample data.

In this specific case I could manually export the output variable (see the whole code on Fiddler) in this way:

new List { 
 { IDMacroTab = 1, IDTab = 1, IDSIot = 2 }
 { IDMacroTab = 1, IDTab = 2, IDSIot 1}
 { IDMacroTab = 1, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 2}
 { IDMacroTab = 1, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 3}
 { IDMacroTab = 2, IDTab = 1, IDSIot = 1}
 { IDMacroTab = 2, IDTab = 1, IDSIot = 2 }
 { IDMacroTab = 2, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 1}
 { IDMacroTab = 2, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 2}
 { IDMacroTab = 2, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 3}
 { IDMacroTab = 3, IDTab = 1, IDSIot = 1}
 { IDMacroTab = 3, IDTab = 1, IDSIot = 2}
 { IDMacroTab = 3, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 1}
 { IDMacroTab = 3, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 2}
 { IDMacroTab = 3, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 3}};

Is there any workaround that allows to serialize an object to the c# lines of code required to populate it?

Answer 1

First solution (partial)

I've found this question which can be pretty useful but just for some kind of object (i.e. lists)

In Visual Studio when debugging C# code, can I export a List or a Dictionary in xml,csv or text format easily?

Second solution

And also this plugin ObjectExporter (last update 2017; checked at 2018)

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=OmarElabd.ObjectExporter

Answer 2

Thrid Solution: ObjectDumper.NET

I might have another solution for you. I was using OmarElabd/ObjectExporter in previous projects with good results but there were problems with some kind of types (e.g. serializations of DateTime didn't work properly at the time). Performance was key too: Some generated objects had a size of 50k lines of code (yeh, don't mention this is too big for a single test data class, I know, but...).

After all, I started writing my own ObjectDumper which you can find published as a NuGet package here. The source code is hosted on github, so feel free to contribute. https://www.nuget.org/packages/ObjectDumper.NET/

The idea of ObjectDumper.NET is that you can dump basically any C# object back to C# initializer code. Compared to ObjectExporter (which is a Visual Studio plug-in), ObjectDumper is installed as NuGet Package. This allows ObjectDumper to be used at runtime - not only at the time of code creation.

Example Usage:

[Fact]
public void SerializeObjectsToInitializerCode()
{
    // Create C# object
    var testObjects = new List<TestObject>
    {
        new TestObject {IDMacroTab = 1, IDTab = 1, IDSIot = 2},
        new TestObject {IDMacroTab = 1, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 1},
        new TestObject {IDMacroTab = 1, IDTab = 2, IDSIot = 2}
    };

    // Pass it to ObjectDumper, choose DumpStyle.CSharp to generate C# initializer code
    var dump = ObjectDumper.Dump(testObjects, DumpStyle.CSharp);

    // Print to console, write to file, etc...
    _testOutputHelper.WriteLine(dump);
}