xUnit Testing Tutorial: Environment Setup For Selenium Testing

Setting Up Visual Studio For Development And Testing

For development, I’ll use the Visual Studio 2019 (VS 2019) IDE. Before looking into the xUnit setup example, I’ll take a brief look at setting up Visual Studio for automation testing with Selenium C#.

Step 1: Visual Studio can be downloaded from here. You can choose from the Community/Professional/Enterprise versions. In this xUnit testing tutorial, I have used the Community Edition of Visual Studio 2019.

Step 2:In this xUnit testing tutorial, the xUnit test framework will be used along with Selenium for test automation. Hence, I’ll install the necessary packages that aid in automation testing with Selenium C# on the Windows platform.

Launch the Visual Studio:

Install the necessary packages:

Step 3: In case you are also installing the Community Edition of Visual Studio, it is important that you sign-in to the IDE else you would not be able to use the IDE after the trial period (approximately 30 days). Once you sign-in, you can also utilize other powerful features such as pushing source code to private Git, syncing Visual Studio settings, and more.

In the next section of the xUnit testing tutorial, I’ll take a look at the steps to install the mandatory packages for performing automation testing with Selenium C# using xUnit framework.

Selenium C# Tutorial: Setting Up Selenium In Visual Studio

This xUnit Tutorial for beginners and professionals will help you learn how to use xUnit framework with Selenium C# for performing Selenium automation testing.

Installing The xUnit Framework & xUnit.net Runner

For executing tests that make use of the xUnit framework, you’ll have to install the corresponding test runner i.e. xUnit.net runner. Installation of the xUnit framework and its runner can be done by installing the packages using the package manager from GUI or executing the equivalent package manager (PM) commands on the terminal.

For this xUnit testing tutorial, I’ll explore both these options for installing the xUnit framework. Before the installation of the required packages, you’ll have to perform the following steps:

Step 1: Create a new project of the type ‘xUnit Test Project (.Net Core)’ in Visual Studio.

Step 2: Since I have created the project based on the xUnit.net framework, the default .cs file contains the [Fact] attribute in it. Also, the xUnit package is also included by default in the source code.

In case you have not created a project of the type mentioned above, you can still use the xUnit framework for performing automation testing with Selenium C#. The xUnit framework and the runner can be installed using the package manager from GUI or the terminal.

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Using Visual Studio IDE

For installing the xUnit test framework and other required packages for performing Selenium test automation with xUnit, perform the following steps:

Step 1: Go to Tools -> NuGet Package Manager -> Manager NuGet Packages for Solution for opening NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio.

Step 2: Search for the following packages in the Browse tab and click Install

• xunit
• xunit.runner.visualstudio
• Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk

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Using Package Manager (PM) Commands

If you are comfortable using the terminal, then you should look at the option of installing the xUnit framework using the Package Manager (PM) commands.

Step 1: For executing commands from the PM console, navigate to Tools -> NuGet Package Manager -> Package Manager Console.

Step 2: For installation of the xUnit packages, we use Install-Package command with the required as the argument to the command.

Install-Package xunit
Install-Package xunit.runner.visualstudio
Install-Package Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk

Shown below are the package installation snapshots:

Step 3: To check whether the packages have been installed successfully, execute the Get-Package command on the PM console. Shown below is the execution output:

PM> Get-Package
 
Id                                  Versions
--                                  --------
xunit                               {2.4.1}
xunit.runner.visualstudio           {2.4.1}
Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk              {16.2.0}

Also Read: NUnit Test Automation Using Selenium C#

How Do AI Coding Assistants Help Set Up xUnit Tests?

GitHub Copilot Chat inside Visual Studio can scaffold a new xUnit test method directly from a selected method, which shortens the manual setup this tutorial walks through. xUnit remains one of the most common .NET unit testing frameworks, alongside NUnit and MSTest, and Visual Studio's AI tooling now targets it directly.

• Copilot Chat /tests command: Highlight a method in Visual Studio and run /tests in Copilot Chat to generate a matching xUnit [Fact] or [Theory] test method with its assertions already written.
• IntelliTest is deprecated: Visual Studio's older automatic test generator, IntelliTest, is deprecated in Visual Studio 2026, which makes Copilot Chat the practical way to scaffold xUnit test methods now.
• Packages still come first: a Copilot-generated test method only compiles once xunit, xunit.runner.visualstudio, and Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk are installed, so the setup steps above stay necessary.
• Selenium step generation: Copilot Chat can also draft the Selenium WebDriver calls inside a generated xUnit test method, which speeds up Selenium testing scripts built on this environment.

None of this replaces installing Visual Studio, xUnit, and its test runner first. Copilot only speeds up the test code that runs inside the environment this tutorial sets up.

Wrapping It Up!

With this crisp xUnit setup example for Selenium test automation, I demonstrated how to get started with the xUnit (or xUnit.net) framework for Visual Studio. Steps shown in the xUnit testing tutorial will be instrumental in performing automation testing with Selenium C# frameworks.

This brings us to the conclusion of this article. You can go ahead and set up the xUnit environment for yourself. We’d have covered a lot of articles before on automation testing with Selenium C#. Feel free to check them out, and do help us to reach out to more people by sharing and retweeting our article. That’s all folks. Happy Testing!!!?