how to create a function to tell me if a statement throws an exception or not in c#

Question

I'd like to have a function take a statement as a parameter, either as a string or as some other type that I'm not aware of, and return true if the execution of that statement throws an exception, and false otherwise.

This may rely on some sort of "string" execution, which I have no idea how to do in C#.

Answer 1

Really the only reason for this is to make it easier to test my code.

It would be better to use a unit test framework, such as NUnit, or Visual Studio Team Test:

• NUnit - ExpectedExceptionAttribute
• A Unit Testing Walkthrough with Visual Studio Team Test - Checking for exceptions

To say that a method should throw an exception you add the ExpectedException attribute, for example:

[Test]
[ExpectedException(typeof(ArgumentException)]
public void NullUserIdInConstructor()
{
    LogonInfo logonInfo = new LogonInfo(null, "P@ss0word");
}

If you don't add this attribute and the method throws then the test automatically fails.

---

For completeness I'll also answer the question you asked: you can't execute a string but you can pass an Action as a parameter.

bool ThrowsException(Action action)
{
    try
    {
        action();
        return false;
    }
    catch
    {
        return true;
    }
}

You can use it like this, for example:

bool result = ThrowsException(() => { throw new NotImplementedException(); });