Testavior

Testavior is a lightweight solution to help you develop Behavior Tests for ASP.NET Core.

Behavior Tests are a way of testing your application features applying different types of behaviors to cover a functional scenario.

It provides a simple and efficient approach to write automated tests for your ASP.NET Core application.
For more information about Behavior Testing with ASP.NET Core, please take a look here http://geeklearning.io/a-different-approach-to-test-your-asp-net-core-application

Features

Testavior provides 2 libraries:

• Testavior.Configuration: Helps you configure your application to easily integrate behavior tests for your scenarios.
• Testavior: Provides a featured and highly configurable test environment for your behavior tests:
  • Configured Test WebHost
  • Configured authentication context
    • Test authentication middleware
    • Configurable test identity
    • Identity claims helper
  • Configured Entity Framework Core context using SQLite provider
  • Serialization helper to handle URL encoded content
  • Set of HTTP tools to handle CSRF protection (very useful to test edition scenarios)
  • Assertion helper

Installation

On your ASP.NET Core project

• Install the GeekLearning.Testavior.Configuration nuget package

  > dotnet add package GeekLearning.Testavior.Configuration
  

On your .NET Core Unit Test project

• Install the GeekLearning.Testavior nuget package

  > dotnet add package GeekLearning.Testavior
  

• Add your ASP.NET Core web project as a project reference

Configuration

The Test environment provided by Testavior is based on a Startup Configuration Service that let you separate the Production environment configuration from the Test environment configuration. This configuration service is represented by a contract IStartupConfigurationService which define 3 methods: Configure - ConfigureEnvironment - ConfigureService that have to be called within the Startup Routine to inject environment dependent configuration.

1 - In your ASP.NET Core project:

• Add a StartupConfigurationService class (change name if you wish) to your web project.
• Implement the IStartupConfigurationService interface (optionally, inherit from DefaultStartupConfigurationService to use the default empty implementation)
• Implement the configuration specific to the Production environment and which must not be executed in the Test environment:
  • ConfigureServices: implement the configuration options that are specific to the Production environment
  • Configure: implement the middleware configuration specific to the Production environment
  • ConfigureEnvironment: implement what has to be executed before anything

Sample:

public class StartupConfigurationService : DefaultStartupConfigurationService
{
   public override void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services, IConfigurationRoot configuration)
   {
       base.ConfigureServices(services, configuration);

       var connection = "CONNECTION_STRING";
           
       services.AddDbContext<[EF_DB_CONTEXT]>(options =>
           options.UseSqlServer(connection));
   }
}

2 - In your Program class:
Inject your StartupConfigurationService by calling the ConfigureStartup method on your WebHostBuilder:

new WebHostBuilder()
   ...
   .UseStartup<Startup>()
   .ConfigureStartup<StartupConfigurationService>()

3 - In your Startup class:

• Inject the IStartupConfigurationService interface into the Startup class
• Call the ConfigureEnvironment method at the end of the Startup constructor
• Call the ConfigureServices method at the end of the original Startup.ConfigureServices method
• Call the Configure method at the beginning of the original Startup.Configure method

Sample:

public class Startup
{
   private IStartupConfigurationService externalStartupConfiguration;

   public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env, IStartupConfigurationService externalStartupConfiguration = null)
   {
       this.externalStartupConfiguration = externalStartupConfiguration;
       this.externalStartupConfiguration.ConfigureEnvironment(env);
   }

   public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
   {
       services.AddMvc()

       // Pass configuration (IConfigurationRoot) to the configuration service if needed
       this.externalStartupConfiguration.ConfigureServices(services, null);
   }

   public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
   {
       this.externalStartupConfiguration.Configure(app, env, loggerFactory);

       app.UseMvc();
   }
}

4 - In your test project file:
The Razor engine uses dependency files (.deps.json) to resolve some references at runtime. So in order to test the MVC part of a application, it is necessary to import these files. To do it, add the following section to your .csproj:

<Target Name="CopyDepsFiles" AfterTargets="Build" Condition="'$(TargetFramework)'!=''">
    <ItemGroup>
      <DepsFilePaths Include="$([System.IO.Path]::ChangeExtension('%(_ResolvedProjectReferencePaths.FullPath)', '.deps.json'))" />
    </ItemGroup>

    <Copy SourceFiles="%(DepsFilePaths.FullPath)" DestinationFolder="$(OutputPath)" Condition="Exists('%(DepsFilePaths.FullPath)')" />
</Target>

5 - For xUnit users
If you intend to use xUnit, first follow the official documention, then add a xunit.runner.json file to your test project:

{
  "shadowCopy": false
}

and add the following section to your .csproj:

<ItemGroup>
  <None Include="xunit.runner.json" CopyToOutputDirectory="PreserveNewest" />
</ItemGroup>

Writing Tests

A specific IStartupConfigurationService is required for the Test environment if you want to implement Test Specific configuration.
Testavior comes with a test specific IStartupConfigurationService implementation: TestStartupConfigurationService which provide a Test Environment full of useful features (see Features section).
Of course you can implement your own Startup configuration service (by using the onboard TestStartupConfigurationService or not).

To create a Test Environment, just instanciate the TestEnvironment class by passing it your ASP.NET Core application Startup, your IStartupConfigurationService implementation, the type of your EF Core ObjectContext and the relative path to your ASP.NET Core project (required to resolve MVC views).

var testEnvironment = new TestEnvironment<Startup, TestStartupConfigurationService<[EF_DB_CONTEXT]>>(
    Path.Combine(System.AppContext.BaseDirectory, @"[PATH_TO_WEB_APP]"));

API Test

Write your API test by just sending web requests using the Test Environment:

[TestMethod]
public void ScenarioShouldBeOk()
{
    var testEnvironment = new TestEnvironment<Startup, TestStartupConfigurationService<[EF_DB_CONTEXT]>>(
       Path.Combine(System.AppContext.BaseDirectory, @"[PATH_TO_WEB_APP]"));

    var response = testEnvironment.Client.GetAsync("/api/data").Result;
    response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();

    // Test result content
    var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Data[]>(response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result);

    Assert.AreEqual("data", result.Data);
}

MVC Test

Write a MVC test is almost as easy as testing an API except that you might want to test the Model returned by the server and not the View.
To do that, Testavior provides a ViewModel Repository that will intercept and store the view's models returned by the server.

You can access to the this repository using the ASP.NET Core dependency injection mechanism:

[TestMethod]
public void ScenarioShouldBeOk()
{
    var testEnvironment = new TestEnvironment<Startup, TestStartupConfigurationService<[EF_DB_CONTEXT]>>(
       Path.Combine(System.AppContext.BaseDirectory, @"[PATH_TO_WEB_APP]"));

    testEnvironment.Client.GetAsync("/").Result.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();

    var viewModel = testEnvironment
                        .ServiceProvider
                        .GetRequiredService<ViewModelRepository>()
                        .Get<[VIEWMODEL_TYPE]>();

    Assert.AreEqual("data", viewModel.Data);
}

And feel free to take a look at the Samples section ;)

Happy testing ! :)