How can you mock LLBLGen? I see that there is an ILinqMetaData interface but it doesn't provide any useful methods to mock out. I'm assuming you would want to program to the ILinqMetaData interface as well as the generated entity interfaces to keep objects loosely coupled to the data. Does anyone have any examples of simple tests/mocks?
I think it's not limited to LLBLGen, maybe this can help:
What's the best strategy for unit-testing database-driven applications?
Personally, I don't normally test my database access or repositories, just the logic that operates on the entities, or integration tests that operate on the entire stack (including the DB).
UPDATE: does this help? it allows you test your logic by mocking the IOrderRepository without having to do any fetch/persistence logic:
public class MyBusinessLogic
{
IOrderRepository orders;
public MyBusinessLogic(IOrderRepository orders)
{
this.orders = orders;
}
public DoSomethingTestable(OrderEntity order)
{
order.Total = 100;
orders.Save(order);
}
}
Related
I am trying to write a Unit Tests to a legacy code using Mockito.
But I am not able to understand how do I mock it. Can some please help.
The real problem I am facing is actually I am not able to decide how to make a decision on what exactly is to be mocked? Below is the code. I have looked at numerous videos on YouTube and read many Mockito Tutorials but all of them seem to be guiding mostly about how to use the Mockito Framework.
The basic idea of what to Mock is still unclear. Please guide if you have a better source. I do understand that the code showed below does not really showcase the best coding practice.
public class DataFacade {
public boolean checkUserPresent(String userId){
return getSomeDao.checkUserPresent(userId);
}
private SomeDao getSomeDao() {
DataSource dataSource = MyDataSourceFactory.getMySQLDataSource();
SomeDao someDao = new SomeDao(dataSource);
}
}
Well, a Unittest, as the name implies, tests a unit. You should mock anything that isn't part of that unit, especially external dependencies. For example, a DAO is normally a good example for something that will be mocked in tests where the class under tests uses it, because otherwise you would really have actual data access in your test, making it slower and more prone to failure because of external reasons (for example, if your dao connects to a Datasource, that Datasource's target (for example, the database) may be down, failing your test even if the unit you wanted to test is actually perfectly fine). Mocking the DAO allows you to test things independently.
Of course, your code is bad. Why? You are creating everything in your method by calling some static factory method. I suggest instead using dependency injection to inject the DAO into your facade, for example...
public DataFacade(SomeDao someDao) {
this.someDao = someDao;
}
This way, when instantiating your DataFacade, you can give it a dao, which means, in your test you can give it a mock, for example...
#Test
public void testSomething() {
SomeDao someDaoMock = Mockito.mock(SomeDao.class);
DataFacade toTest = new DataFacade(someDaoMock);
...now you can prepare your mock to do something and then call the DataFace method
}
Dependency injection frameworks like Spring, Google Guice, etc. can make this even easier to manage, but the first step is to stop your classes from creating their own dependencies, but let the dependencies be given to them from the outside, which makes the whole thing a lot better.
You should "mock" the inner objects that you use in your methods.
For example if you write unit tests for DataFacade->checkUserPresent, you should mock the getSomeDao field.
You have a lot of ways to do it, but basically you can make getSomeDao to be public field, or get it from the constructor. In your test class, override this field with mocked object.
After you invoke DataFacade->checkUserPresent method, assert that checkUserPresent() is called.
For exmaple if you have this class:
public class StudentsStore
{
private DbReader _db;
public StudentsStore(DbReader db)
{
_db = db;
}
public bool HasStudents()
{
var studentsCount = _db.GetStudentsCount();
if (studentsCount > 0)
return true;
else
return false;
}
}
And in your test method:
var mockedDb = mock(DbReader.class);
when(mockedDb.GetStudentsCount()).thenReturn(1);
var store = new StudentsSture(mockedDb);
assertEquals(true,store.HasStudents());
I have already had some difficulties on unit tests and I am trying to learn it while using a small project I currently am working on and I ran into this problem these two problems that I hope you can help me with
1- My project is an MVC project. At which level should my unit tests start? They should focus only on the business layer? Should they also test actions on my controllers?
2- I have a method that verifies an username format and then access the DB to check if it is available for use. The return is a boolean whether this username is available or not.
Would one create a unit test for such a method?
I would be interested on testing the format verification, but how would I check them without querying the DB? Also, if the formats are correct, but the username is already in use, I will get a false value, but the validation worked. I could decouple this method, but the DB verification should only happen if the format is correct, so they should somehow be tied.
How would someone with unit tests knowledge solve this issue. Or how would someone refactor this method to be able to test it?
I could create a stub for the DB access, but how would I attach it to my project on the user testing but detach it when running locally?
Thanks!
In your specific case, one easy thing you could do is decompose your verification method into 3 different methods: one to check formatting, one to check DB availability, and one to tie them both together. This would allow you to test each of the sub-functions in isolation.
In more complex scenarios, other techniques may be useful. In essence, this is where dependency injection and inversion of control come in handy (unfortunately, those phrases mean different things to different people, but getting the basic ideas is usually a good start).
Your goal should be to decouple the concept of "Check if this username is available" from the implementation of checking the DB for it.
So, instead of this:
public class Validation
{
public bool CheckUsername(string username)
{
bool isFormatValid = IsFormatValid(username);
return isFormatValid && DB.CheckUsernameAvailability(username);
}
}
You could do something like this:
public class Validation
{
public bool CheckUsername(string username,
IUsernameAvailabilityChecker checker)
{
bool isFormatValid = IsFormatValid(username);
return isFormatValid && checker.CheckUsernameAvailability(username);
}
}
And then, from your unit test code, you can create a custom IUsernameAvailabilityChecker which does whatever you want for testing purposes. On the other hand, the actual production code can use a different implementation of IUsernameAvailabilityChecker to actually query the database.
Keep in mind that there are many, many techniques to solve this kind of testing problem, and the examples I gave are simple and contrived.
Testing against outside services can be done using mocking. If you've done a good job using interfaces it's very easy to mock various parts of your application. These mocks can be injected into your unit and used like it would normally handle it.
You should start unit testing as soon as possible. If your application is not complete or code needed for testing is absent you can still test against some interface you can mock.
On a sidenote: Unit testing is about testing behavior and is not an effective way to find bugs. You will find bugs with testing but it should not be your goal.
For instance:
interface UserService {
public void setUserRepository(UserRepository userRepository);
public boolean isUsernameAvailable(String username);
}
class MyUserService implements UserService {
private UserRepository userRepository;
public vois setUserRepository(UserRepository userRepository) {
this.userRepository = userRepository;
}
public boolean isUsernameAvailable(String username) {
return userRepository.checkUsernameAvailability(username);
}
}
interface UserRepository {
public boolean checkUsernameAvailability(String username);
}
// The mock used for testing
class MockUserRepository {
public boolean checkUsernameAvailability(String username) {
if ("john".equals(username)) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
}
class MyUnitTest {
public void testIfUserNotAvailable() {
UserService service = new UserService();
service.setUserRepository(new MockUserRepository);
assertFalse(service.isUsernameAvailable('john')); // yep, it's in use
}
public void testIfUserAvailable() {
UserService service = new UserService();
service.setUserRepository(new MockUserRepository);
assertTrue(service.isUsernameAvailable('mary')); // yep, is available
}
}
I have seen lots of posts (and debates!) about which way round UnitOfWork and Repository. One of the repository patterns I favor is the typed generic repository pattern, but I fear this had lead to some issues with clean code and testability. Take the following repository interface and generic class:
public interface IDataEntityRepository<T> : IDisposable where T : IDataEntity
{
// CRUD
int Create(T createObject);
// etc.
}
public class DataEntityRepository<T> : IDataEntityRepository<T> where T : class, IDataEntity
{
private IDbContext Context { get; set; }
public DataEntityRepository (IDbContext context)
{
Context = context;
}
private IDbSet<T> DbSet { get { return Context.Set<T>(); } }
public int Create(T CreateObject)
{
DbSet.Add(createObject);
}
// etc.
}
// where
public interface IDbContext
{
IDbSet<T> Set<T>() where T : class;
DbEntityEntry<T> Entry<T>(T readObject) where T : class;
int SaveChanges();
void Dispose();
}
So basically I am using the Context property in each pattern to gain access to the underlying context.
My problem is now this: when I create my unit of work, it will effectively be a wrapper of the context I need the repository to know about. So, if I have a Unit Of Work that declares the following:
public UserUnitOfWork(
IDataEntityRepository<User> userRepository,
IDataEntityRepository<Role> roleRepository)
{
_userRepository = userRepository;
_roleRepository = roleRepository;
}
private readonly IDataEntityRepository<User> _userRepository;
public IDataEntityRepository<User> UserRepository
{
get { return _userRepository; }
}
private readonly IDataEntityRepository<Role> _roleRepository;
public IDataEntityRepository<Role> RoleRepository
{
get { return _roleRepository; }
}
I have a problem with the fact that the two repositories I am passing in both need to be instantiated with the very Unit Of Work into which they are being passed. Obviously I could instantiate the repositories inside the constructor and pass in the "this" but that tightly couples my unit of work to a particular concrete instance of the repositories and makes unit testing that much harder.
I would be interested to know if anyone else has headed down this path and hit the same wall. Both these patterns are new to me so I could well be doing something fundamentally wrong. Any ideas would be much appreciated!
UPDATE (response to #MikeSW)
Hi Mike, many thanks for your input. I am working with EF Code First but I wanted to abstract certain elements so I could switch to a different data source or ORM if required and because I am (trying!) to push myself down a TDD route and using Mocking and IOC. I think I have realised the hard way that certain elements cannot be unit tested in a pure sense but can have integration tests! I'd like to raise your point about Repositories working with business objects or viewmodels etc. Perhaps I have misunderstood but if I have what I see as my core business objects (POCOs), and I then want to use an ORM such as EF code first to wrap around those entities in order to create, and then interact with, the database (and, it's possible, I may re-use these entities within a ViewModel), I would expect a Repository to handle these entities directly in the context of some set of CRUD operations. The entities know nothing about the persistence layer at all, neither would any ViewModel. My unit of work simply instantiates and holds the required repositories allowing a transaction commit to be performed (across multiple repositories but the same context/ session). What I have done in my solution is to remove the injection of an IDataEntityRepository ... etc. from the UnitOfWork constructor as this is a concrete class that must know about one and only one type of IDataEntityRepository it should be creating (in this case DataEntityRepository, which really should be bettered names as EFDataEntityRepository). I cannot unit test this per se because the whole unit logic would be to establish the repositories with a context (itself) to some database. It simply needs an integration test. Hope that makes sense?!
To avoid dependency on each repository in your Unit of Work, you could use a provider based on this contract:
public interface IRepositoryProvider
{
DbContext DbContext { get; set; }
IRepository<T> GetRepositoryForEntityType<T>() where T : class;
T GetRepository<T>(Func<DbContext, object> factory = null) where T : class;
void SetRepository<T>(T repository);
}
then you could inject it into your UoW that would look like this:
public class UserUnitOfWork: IUserUnitOfWork
{
public UserUnitOfWork(IRepositoryProvider repositoryProvider)
{
RepositoryProvider = repositoryProvider;
}
protected IDataEntityRepository<T> GetRepo<T>() where T : class
{
return RepositoryProvider.GetRepositoryForEntityType<T>();
}
public IDataEntityRepository<User> Users { get { return GetRepo<User>(); } }
public IDataEntityRepository<Role> Roles { get { return GetRepo<Role>(); } }
...
Apologies for the tardiness of my response - I have been trying out various approaches to this in the mean time. I have marked up the answers above because I agree with the comments made.
This is one of those questions where there is more than one answer and it's very much dependent upon the overall approach. Whilst I agree that EF effectively provides a ready-made unit of work pattern, my decision to create my own unit of work and repository layers was to be able to control access to the database entities.
Where I struggled was in the need to be able to inject a repository into a unit of work. What I realised though was that in the case of EF, my unit of work was effectively a thin wrapper around multiple repositories with a Commit (SaveChanges) method. It was not responsible for executing specific actions such as FindCustomer etc.
So I decided that a unit of work could be tightly coupled to its specific type of DataRepository pattern. To ensure I had a testable pattern, I introduced a service layer that provided the facade for executing particular actions such as CreateCustomer, FindCustomers etc. These services that accepted an IUnitOfWork constructor parameter which provided access to the repositories (as interfaces) as well as the Commit method.
I was then able to create fakes of both unit of work and/ or repositories for testing purposes. This just left me with the decision of what could be unit tested with fakes and what needed to be integration tested with the concrete instances.
And this also gives me the opportunity to control what actions are performed on the database and how they are performed.
I'm sure there are many ways to skin this particular cat but the goals of provided a clean interface that is testable have been just about met with this approach.
My thanks to g1ga and Mike for their input.
When using Entity Framework (EF) (which I assume you're using) you already have a generic repository IDbSet. It's useless to ad another layer on top just to call EF methods.
Also, a repository works with application objects (usually business objects, but they can be view models or objects state). If you're just using db entities, you kinda defeat the Repository pattern purpose ( to isolate the business bojects from the database). THe original pattern deals only with busines objects, but it is a useful pattern outside the business layer too.
The point is that EF entities are Persistence objects and have (or should have) no relation to your business objects. You want to use the repository pattern to 'translate' the busines objects to persistence objects and viceversa.
Sometimes it might happen that an application object (like a viewmodel) to be the same with a persistence entity (and in that case you can use directly EF objects) but that's a coincidence.
About Unit of Work (UoW), let's say that's tricky. Personally, I prefer to use the DDD (domain driven design) approach and consider that any business object (BO) sent to the repoistory is a UoW, so it will be wrapped in a transaction.
If I need to update multiple BOs, I'll use a message driven architecture to send commands to the relevant BOs. Of course, that's more complicated and requires to be at ease with the concept of eventual consistency but I'm not depending on a specific RDBMS.
If you know that you'll be using a specific RDBMS and that will never be changed, you could start a transaction and pass the associated connection to each repository, with a commit at the end (that will be the UoW). If you're in a web setting, it's even easier, start transaction when the request begins, commit when requests ends (you can use an ActionFilter for ASp.Net Mvc).
However this solution is tied up to one RDBMS, so it won't apply to a NoSql or any storage which doesn't support transactions. For those cases, the message driven way is the best.
I've researched some information about techniques I could use to unit test a DbContext. I would like to add some in-memory data to the context so that my tests could run against it. I'm using Database-First approach.
The two articles I've found most usefull were this and this.
That approach relies on creating an IContext interface that both MyContext and FakeContext will implement, allowing to Mock the context.
However, I'm trying to avoid using repositories to abstract EF, as pointed by some people, since EF 4.1 already implements repository and unit of work patterns through DbSet and DbContext, and I really would like to preserve all the features implemented by the EF Team without having to maintain them myself with a generic repository, as I already did in other project (and it was kind of painful).
Working with an IContext will lead me to the same path (or won't it?).
I thought about creating a FakeContext that inherits from main MyContext and thus take advantage of the DbContext underneath it to run my tests without hitting the database.
I couldn't find similar implementations, so I'm hoping someone can help me on this.
Am I doing something wrong, or could this lead me to some problems that I'm not anticipating?
Ask yourself a single question: What are you going to test?
You mentioned FakeContext and Mocking the context - why to use both? Those are just different ways to do the same - provide test only implementation of the context.
There is one more bigger problem - faking or mocking context or set has only one result: You are not testing your real code any more.
Simple example:
public interface IContext : IDisposable
{
IDbSet<MyEntity> MyEntities { get; }
}
public class MyEntity
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Path { get; set; }
}
public class MyService
{
private bool MyVerySpecialNetMethod(e)
{
return File.Exists(e.Path);
}
public IEnumerable<MyEntity> GetMyEntities()
{
using (IContext context = CreateContext())
{
return context.MyEntities
.Where(e => MyVerySpecialNetMethod(e))
.Select(e)
.ToList();
}
}
}
Now imagine that you have this in your SUT (system under test - in case of unit test it is an unit = usually a method). In the test code you provide FakeContext and FakeSet and it will work - you will have a green test. Now in the production code you will provide a another derived DbContext and DbSet and you will get exception at runtime.
Why? Because by using FakeContext you have also changed LINQ provider and instead of LINQ to Entities you are running LINQ to Objects so calling local .NET methods which cannot be converted to SQL works as well as many other LINQ features which are not available in LINQ to Entities! There are other issues you can find with data modification as well - referential integrity, cascade deletes, etc. That is the reason why I believe that code dealing with context / LINQ to Entities should be covered with integration tests and executed against the real database.
I am developing an open-source library to solve this problem.
http://effort.codeplex.com
A little teaser:
You don't have to add any boilerplate code, just simply call the appropriate API of the library, for example:
var context = Effort.ObjectContextFactory.CreateTransient<MyContext>();
At first this might seem to be magic, but the created ObjectContext object will communicate with an in-memory database and will not talk to the original real database at all. The term "transient" refers to the lifecycle of this database, it only lives during the presence of the created ObjectContext object. Concurrently created ObjectContext objects communicate with dedicated database instances, the data is not shared accross them. This enables to write automated tests easily.
The library provides various features to customize the creation: share data across instances, set initial data of the database, create fake database on different data layers... check out the project site for more info.
As of EF 4.3, you can unit test your code by injecting a fake DefaultConnectionFactory before creating the context.
Entity Framework 4.1 is close to being able to be mocked up in tests but requires a little extra effort. The T4 template provides you with a DbContext derived class that contains DbSet properties. The two things that I think you need to mock are the DbSet objects that these properties return and properites and methods you're using on the DbContext derived class. Both can be achieved by modifying the T4 template.
Brent McKendrick has shown the types of modifications that need to be made in this post, but not the T4 template modifications that can achieve this. Roughly, these are:
Convert the DbSet properties on the DbContext derived class into IDbSet properties.
Add a section that generates an interface for the DbContext derived class containing the IDbSet properties and any other methods (such as SaveChanges) that you'll need to mock.
Implement the new interface in the DbContext derived class.
How to mock ObjectContext or ObjectQuery in Entity Framework?
The basic mocking frameworks can only create mocks for interfaces and for abstract classes (but only for abstract/virtual methods).
As the ObjectContext is neither abstract nor interface, it is not so easy to mock it. However, as the concrete model container is generated as partial class (if you use the designer), you can extract the methods/properties you need from it to an interface. In your code, you may use the interface only, that you can mock afterwards.
With the ObjectQuery it is a little bit more easy, as it has a base interface (e.g. IQueryable) that basically contains all the neccessary operations that you usually need (and required for LINQ). So you should expose IQueryable instead of ObjectQuery in your business logic, and you can create mock for that interface.
Other alternative is to hide all data-access related logic into a separate layer (with minimal logic), test this layer with integration tests, and mock it to be able to unit test the other layers.
There are tools (I know only TypeMock) that use the profiling hooks of .NET to generate the mocks. These tools are not limited to mock interfaces or abstract classes, but with them you can mock basically anything, including non-virtual and static methods. With such a tool you don't need to change your business logic in order to allow mocking.
Although this approach is sometimes useful, you have to be aware that extracting the dependencies to interfaces (IoC) is not only helpful for mocking, but also it reduces the dependencies between your components, that has other benefits too.
Personally I like Rhino.Mocks the best from the freeware tools, but we also use TypeMock as well, which is also a great product (but you have to pay for it).
Why can't we just create the actual context object to be used in our tests? Since we don't want our tests to affect the production database, we can always specify a connection string that points to a test database. Before running each test, construct a new context, add the data you will need in your test, proceed with the unit test, then in the test cleanup section, delete all the records that were created during the test. The only side-affect here would be that the auto-increment IDs would be used up in the test database, but since it's a test database - who cares?
I know that most answers regarding this question propose using DI/IoC designs to create interfaces for data contexts etc. but the reason I am using Entity Framework is exactly to not write any interfaces for my database connections, object models, and simple CRUD transactions. To write mock interfaces for my data objects and to write complex queryable objects to support LINQ, defeats the purpose of relying on highly-tested and reliable Entity Framework.
This pattern for unit testing is not new - Ruby on Rails has been using it for a long time and it's worked out great. Just as .NET provides EF, RoR provides ActiveRecord objects and each unit test creates the objects it needs, proceeds with the tests, and then deletes all the constructed records.
How to specify connection string for test environment? Since all tests are in their own dedicated test project, adding a new App.Config file with a connection string for the test database would suffice.
Just think of how much headache and pain this will save you.
I agree with the others you cannot really Mock ObjectContext. You should use EF DbContext because you can mock the underlying DbSet There are quite a lot of post how to do that. So I won't write how to do it. However if you absolutely must use ObjectContext (for some reason) and you want to Unit test it you can use InMemory database.
First install this Nuget package: Effort (Entity Framework Fake ObjectContext Realization Tool), which uses NMemory as the database. Install Effort.EF6 package:
PM> Install-Package Effort.EF6
using System;
using System.Data.Common;
using System.Data.Entity;
using System.Data.Entity.Core.Objects;
using System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure;
using Effort;
public class DbContextHelper
{
//Fake object you can drop this if you are using your own EF context
private class DbObject
{
public Guid Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
//Fake EF context you can switch with you own EF context
private class FakeDbContext : DbContext
{
public FakeDbContext(DbConnection connection)
: base(connection, true) { }
public virtual DbSet<DbObject> DbObjects { get; set; }
}
private FakeDbContext _dbContext;
public DbContextHelper()
{
//In memory DB connection
DbConnection effortConnection = DbConnectionFactory.CreatePersistent("TestInstanceName");
_dbContext = new FakeDbContext(effortConnection);
}
//You can expose your context instead of the DbContext base type
public DbContext DbContext => _dbContext;
public ObjectContext ObjectContext => ((IObjectContextAdapter)_dbContext).ObjectContext;
//Method to add Fake object to the fake EF context
public void AddEntityWithState(string value, EntityState entityState)
{
DbContext.Entry(new DbObject() { Id = Guid.NewGuid(), Name = value }).State = entityState;
}
}
Usage:
DbContextHelper _dbContextHelper = new DbContextHelper();
_dbContextHelper.AddEntityWithState("added", System.Data.Entity.EntityState.Added);
_dbContextHelper.AddEntityWithState("added", System.Data.Entity.EntityState.Modified);
var objs = _dbContextHelper.ObjectContext.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Modified | EntityState.Added);
There you are you have your object in memory DB.