Clean Up after Canceling tests

Question

I'm currently running tests through visual studio. Before all the tests are run, I automatically create a set number of users with know credentials, and at the end of the run I delete those users. However, sometimes I need to cancel my tests midway. In these cases the test never gets the chance to clean up, this means that there is left over fake user info from the test run and may causes the next test run to crash (when it attempts to add user info into the DB). Is there anyway to force visual studio/mstest to run a clean up method even if the test is canceled?

I know one option is to have the test check and make sure that the user info doesn't already exist, and if it does remove it before creating the new users. But this still wouldn't solve the issue of the canceled test run leaving unwanted test data.

Update:

Sorry for the miscommunication, however cleaning up the data at the start of the test is not an option. I'm giving a very simplistic view of the issue, but put simply, I have no easy way of making sure that no test data exists at the start of the test. All clean up must occur at the end of the test.

Answer 1

Visual studio uses NUNIT therefore, you can use TearDownAttribute. It should run after the test, even if the test is canceled. You can write a function to clean your data.

Please read the reference documentation here: http://nunit.org/docs/2.2/teardown.html

Answer 2

Just to clear more about the NUNIT standrad. Please follow the steps in the Test class:

[TestFixture]
public class _TestClass
{
        [TestFixtureSetUp]
        public void Setup()
        {
           //Clearup can be here before start of the tests. But not Recommended
        }

        [Test]
        public void _Test1()
        {
        }
        [Test]
        public void _Test2()
        {
        }

        [TestFixtureTearDown]
        public void CleanUp()
        {
            //I will recommend to clean up after all the tests complete
        }
}

Reference: http://nunit.org/docs/2.5/fixtureTeardown.html

Answer 3

Perform the clean up before creating the data as well, this will ensure that you have no leftover data whatever happens. Of course this is only possible if you can identify any leftover data before running the setup.