MSTest - Integration tests - use value of another test - integration-testing

Question

I know that unit tests should run isolated and should never depend on other unit tests.
However, I also write some integration tests with MSTest and sometimes they produce a result that I would like to reuse in another test.
For example:
Creating a user
Searching this user from the database
Deleting the user
Each of those points would be an integration test for me, so I would like to write methods that look like this:
User _myNewUser;
[TestMethod]
public void CreateAUserTest()
{
//User gets created here somehow....
_myNewUser = successfullyCreatedUser;
}
And this test should run after the preceeding test:
User _myNewUser;
[TestMethod]
public void SearchingUserTest()
{
var user = searchUser(_newUser.GetName());
//Assert that user is not null
}
You can see that I use the value of the first test in the second test.
With a playlist I could make sure that both tests run in the correct order.
However, in VS 2022 each test gets executed in isolation, so what I am trying to do does not work.
_newUser is always null if I run the second test, even if the first test was a success.
Is my idea bad in general?
If not: How can I use the produced data of a test in another test?

Answer 1

I usually extract the contents of a test like that into a separate staging function that does not contain the [TestMethod] attribute, so that I can reuse it to stage other tests.
private void Stage_CreateAUser()
{
//do work from CreateAUserTest()
}
[TestMethod]
public void CreateAUserTest()
{
Stage_CreateAUser();
}
private void Stage_SearchingUser()
{
//do work from CreateAUserTest()
}
[TestMethod]
public void SearchingUserTest()
{
Stage_CreateAUser();
Stage_SearchingUser();
}
Etc...