Working with Coverage Results

No matter what type of coverage analysis you perform, coverage of unit tests, coverage of an application, or coverage of tests on server side, dotCover saves the results in a coverage snapshot. You can then further investigate these results using one of the following ways:

• Coverage Results Browser window (available in both Visual Studio and dotCover standalone application) - this tool window allows opening coverage snapshots recorded during application coverage run or saved in a file.
  If the current snapshot contains assemblies that correspond to the current solution, you can navigate to source code of any item within the snapshot by double-clicking on it.
• Unit Test Sessions window (only available in Visual Studio) - this tool window displays the hierarchy of unit tests in the current test session. The Coverage area in this window allows displaying coverage tree and synchronizing it with unit tests.
  Coverage analysis options here are the same as in the Coverage Results Browser window, plus you can view total coverage of each unit test or test class.
• You can quickly view coverage results for the currently opened file by simply looking at the "shield" icon in the right gutter of the Visual Studio editor:
  • Depending on the results, the icon will look differently: all statements covered, statements are partly covered, statements are partly covered but some tests fail, and so on.
  • The icon shows the results either of Continuous Testing Session or of the same session that is used to show coverage highlighting in the editor ( Highlight code is enabled on the Coverage tab of the Unit Test Sessions window).
  If you hover the mouse over the icon, you’ll get more details on total coverage percentage and the number of failed tests.

  

  Clicking the icon navigates you through the uncovered statements.

The ways of exploring and studying coverage results include:

• Visualizing Code Coverage right in the editor according to the coverage results.
• Detecting Hot Spots to quickly find potential risk areas.
• Navigating to Covering Tests that cover a particular statement in your code.
• Locating Code Items in Coverage Tree (types, methods, etc.) to see how well they are covered in the current snapshot.
• Searching Coverage Tree to quickly find code items in the coverage tree.
• Saving and Opening Coverage Snapshot to return to the analyzed results later or to share the results.
• Excluding Nodes from Coverage Snapshot to recalculate coverage statistics.
• Viewing Total Coverage of Particular Unit Test Item to recalculate the total coverage.
• Matching Coverage Snapshot with Project Structure that makes navigation within a snapshot more comfortable.
• Exporting Coverage Results into reports in one of the following formats: HTML, XML, JSON, and XML for NDepend.