Unit testing private methods in C#

You can use PrivateObject Class

Class target = new Class();
PrivateObject obj = new PrivateObject(target);
var retVal = obj.Invoke("PrivateMethod");
Assert.AreEqual(expectedVal, retVal);

Note: PrivateObject and PrivateType are not available for projects targeting netcoreapp2.0 - GitHub Issue 366

Yes, don't Test private methods.... The idea of a unit test is to test the unit by its public 'API'.

If you are finding you need to test a lot of private behavior, most likely you have a new 'class' hiding within the class you are trying to test, extract it and test it by its public interface.

One piece of advice / Thinking tool..... There is an idea that no method should ever be private. Meaning all methods should live on a public interface of an object.... if you feel you need to make it private, it most likely lives on another object.

This piece of advice doesn't quite work out in practice, but its mostly good advice, and often it will push people to decompose their objects into smaller objects.

“There is nothing called as standard or best practice, probably they are just popular opinions”.

Same holds true for this discussion as well.

It all depends on what you think is a unit , if you think UNIT is a class then you will only hit the public method. If you think UNIT is lines of code hitting private methods will not make you feel guilty.

If you want to invoke private methods you can use "PrivateObject" class and call the invoke method. You can watch this indepth youtube video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq6Gcs9LrPQ ) which shows how to use "PrivateObject" and also discusses if testing of private methods are logical or not.