Simple performance stopwatch

I often needed to know how long a process took. I do use BenchmarkDotNet, but often I want a simpler method, and My solution is TimeThings. TimeThings is very easy to use and very flexible (see next section), but its nowhere as good at BenchmarkDotNet, but it only add ~2ms to the performance test. I use TimeThings to get a "quick and dirty" performance while I'm building a new application, but if performance is important I use BenchmarkDotNet to get accurate timing, for instance I used BenchmarkDotNet in my Net.DistributedFileStoreCache.

An example of using the TimeThings in Xunit unit tests

I usually TimeThings in my Xunit unit tests, and the code below shows a basic use, but you be aware most unit tests run in parallel, which affect the time a process takes - see this section on how to run your unit test to get a "correct" time).

public class TestTimeThings(ITestOutputHelper output) 
//The ITestOutputHelper is Xunit's way to return a string to your Test Explorer
{
    [Fact]
    public void TestWithTimeThings()
    {
        //SETUP                  
        //your test setup

        //ATTEMPT
        using (new TimeThings(output))
        {
            //your process you need to test and 
        }

        //VERIFY
        //your test checks
    }

The default message returns a string with a time, e.g., "took 1.64 ms.", which comes up in your Test Explorer (assuming that the your process doesn't throw an Exception).

The TimeThings class has some optional parameters you can use, like message and numRuns - see the

/// <summary>
/// This will measure the time it took from this class being created to it being disposed and writes out to xUnit ITestOutputHelper
/// </summary>
/// <param name="output">On dispose it will write the result to the output</param>
/// <param name="message">Optional: a string to show in the result. Useful if you have multiple timing in one unit test.</param>
/// <param name="numRuns">Optional: if the timing covers multiple runs of something, then set numRuns to the number of runs and it will give you the average per run</param>
public TimeThings(ITestOutputHelper output, string message = "", int numRuns = 0)
{
   // rest of code left out

So, if you used the TimeThings class with new TimeThings(output, "read data", 500), you would get the string 500 x read data took 23.45 ms., ave. per run = 46.90 us.