MVC4 unit test and windows authentication - asp.net-mvc-4

As far as I see, unless my mvc4 app uses windows authentication (and so my controllers tries to read the User objects) when I create my controller instance from a TestMethod, the User object remains null. So my tests fails. What can I do to get them work?
Additional informations:
This is my test:
[TestMethod]
public void Create()
{
var ctrl = new LanguageController();
var res = ctrl.Manage() as ViewResult;
Assert.IsNotNull(res);
Assert.AreEqual(res.ViewName, "Create");
}
And my LanguageController has a base class:
public class LanguageController : MyController
{
Which has a constructor, inside it I try to discover the user rights by an external Right Manager.
public class MyController : Controller
{
protected Rights rm;
public MyController()
{
this.rm = RightManager.Discover(User.Identity);
}
Here in this constructor I see the User is null.

Okay, there are few issues with your Unit test and I will go through them as I explain why the User is null.
It is simply because you haven't provide a stubbed version of the User (IPrincipal) instance. So you need to find a way to inject that into your Controller. It is important you externalize as much dependencies in your Controller so it provides not a clean Controller to work with but also and importantly promote the testability.
What I would do inject the dependencies as below.
Your SUT (System Under Test)
public class MyController : Controller
{
protected Rights rm;
public MyController(IPrincipal user, IRightManager rightManager)
{
this.rm = rightManager.Discover(user.Identity);
}
}
public class LanguageController : MyController
{
public LanguageController(IPrincipal user, IRightManager rightManager)
: base(user, rightManager)
{
}
public ActionResult Manage()
{
return View("Manage");
}
}
This gives me the ability to inject a fake User and also a fake Right Manager.
So how would you get the real User, RightManager when you run the application at runtime?
You can inject the dependencies to the Controller during the Controller creation.
If you don't use a dependency injection framework (Ideally you should), you can still inject dependencies in a manual way. For example, creating property in your Controller and inject the real instance in the Controller, and during the Unit Testing time inject the fake instance etc. I won't go into detail as I'm deviating a bit - but you can find lot SO questions/web references in regards to this aspect.
Your Unit test
Now you have a way to inject your dependencies you can easily inject them from your Unit test. You can either using an Isolation framework (AKA and Mock object framework) or you can inject them as the old school way - which is the Hand written mocks/fakes/stubs. I suggest using an Isolation framework. Creating manual fakes, introduces unnecessary code duplication and maintenance issue. Since I don't know which framework you prefer, I created few handwritten fakes/mocks/stubs.
public class FakeRightManager : IRightManager {
public Rights Discover(IIdentity identity) {
return new Rights();
}
}
public class MyFakeIdentity : IIdentity {
public string AuthenticationType {
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
public bool IsAuthenticated {
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
public string Name {
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
}
public class MyFakePrincipal : IPrincipal {
public IIdentity Identity {
get { return new MyFakeIdentity(); }
}
public bool IsInRole(string role) {
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}
You Unit Test :
[TestMethod]
public void ManageAction_Execute_ReturnsViewNameManager()
{
var fakeUser = new MyFakePrincipal();
var fakeRightManager = new FakeRightManager();
var ctrl = new LanguageController(fakeUser, fakeRightManager);
var res = ctrl.Manage() as ViewResult;
Assert.AreEqual<string>(res.ViewName, "Manage");
}
In your test you check for Assert.IsNotNull(res); this not necessary as if the res is null your second assert going to fail anyway.
Also always give a very descriptive precise Unit Test name. Reflect what you exactly testing. It improves the test readability and maintainability.

Related

Why WebApplicationFactory is saving state from previous builds?

I will try to show my problem with a sample code easier to understand.
I have used WebApplicationFactory to develop my acceptance tests. Let's say that I have the typical minimal Program.cs with the following line to register one of my modules:
builder.Services.RegisterModule<StartupRegistrationModule>(builder.Configuration, builder.Environment);
And this module is declared like this:
internal sealed class StartupRegistrationModule : IServiceRegistrationModule
{
public static Dictionary<string, string> _dictionary = new();
public void Register(IServiceCollection services, IConfiguration configuration, IHostEnvironment hostEnvironment)
{
// Lot of modules being registered
_dictionary.Add("key", "value");
}
}
One of my tests file is like this:
public sealed class MyTests : AcceptanceTestBase
{
[Fact]
public void Test1()
{
// arrange
// act
// assert
}
[Fact]
public void Test2()
{
// arrange
// act
// assert
}
[Fact]
public void Test3()
{
// arrange
// act
// assert
}
}
And AcceptanceTestBase is:
public abstract class AcceptanceTestBase : IDisposable
{
protected HttpClient _httpClient;
protected WebApplicationFactory<Program> _webApplicationFactory;
public AcceptanceTestBase()
{
_webApplicationFactory = new WebApplicationFactory<Program>()
.WithWebHostBuilder(builder =>
{
// ... Configure test services
});
_httpClient = _webApplicationFactory.CreateClient();
}
public void Dispose()
{
_httpClient.Dispose();
_webApplicationFactory.Dispose();
}
}
If I try to execute all these tests my tests will fail in the second test run because the WebApplicationFactory is trying to build again the Application but it already has the key in the dictionary and it will fail. See the image for more understanding on the problem.
So my question is, how can I build the application in different scopes to do not share this dictionary state?
Thanks :)
Update:
The real static dictionary is saved behind this nuget package that keeps the track of all my circuit breaker policies state. I do not actually need even the HttpClients for my tests but did not find a way to remove them and not load this. I tried removing all the HttpClients to see if it also removes their dependencies, but it does not seem to make the trick.
It is because you are using:
internal sealed class StartupRegistrationModule : IServiceRegistrationModule
{
/// .. static here
public static Dictionary<string, string> _dictionary = new();
public void Register(IServiceCollection services, IConfiguration configuration, IHostEnvironment hostEnvironment)
{
// Lot of modules being registered
_dictionary.Add("key", "value");
}
}
The static Dictionary is shared over all your tests because they run in the same process.
Each test starts a new (Test-)WebHost but the dictionary remains untouched.
My proposal is to not use statics anywhere in DI context to prevent such hidden traps.
I don't know the purpose of your Dictionary here but maybe you can extract this to a singleton registration which you can replace in your (Test.)WebHost on each new test / startup?

Connection String retrieved from one DB to be used in a Class Library to access a 2nd DB...Suggestions?

Environment:
.Net, SQL Server, WinForms Desktop
Control Database (db1)
Customer Databases (db2, db3, db4, etc.)
Background:
Each of our customers requires their own database. It's a contractual obligation due to compliance with standards in certain industries. Certain users of our application only have access to specific databases.
Scenario:
The application user's username gets passed into our control database (db1) from the app on load. There's a lookup in there that determines what customer this user has access to and returns connection string info for connecting to the database of the determined customer (db2 or db3 or db4 or etc.) to be used for the life of the runtime. All of my business logic is in a DAL, as it should be, in a .Net class library.
Suggestions on the best way/ways to get the connection string information into the DAL WITHOUT passing into every constructor/method that is called on the DAL.
I came up with one possible solution, but want to pick your brains to see if there's another or better way.
Possible Solutions:
A Global module in the DAL that has public fields like "dbServer" and "dbName".
Set those and then use the DAL as needed. They would need to be set each time the DAL is used throughout the application, but at least I don't have to make the signature of every single constructor and method require connection string information.
A settings file (preferably XML) that the app writes to after getting the connection info and the DAL reads from for the life of the runtime.
Thoughts and/or suggestions? Thanks in advance.
A set up like this might help. If you are going the IoC way, then you can remove the parameterized constructor and make Connection object a dependency too. However, you will need to feed your dependency injection provider in code since connection string comes from database.
public class User
{
public string ConnectionString
{
get; set;
}
}
public class SomeBusinessEntity
{
}
public class CallerClass
{
public IBaseDataAccess<SomeBusinessEntity> DataAccess
{
get;
set;
}
public void DoSomethingWithDatabase(User user)// Or any other way to access current user
{
// Either have specific data access initialized
SpecificDataAccess<SomeBusinessEntity> specificDataAccess = new SpecificDataAccess<SomeBusinessEntity>(user.ConnectionString);
// continue
// have dependency injection here as well. Your IoC configuration must ensure that it does not kick in until we get user object
DataAccess.SomeMethod();
}
}
public interface IBaseDataAccess<T>
{
IDbConnection Connection
{
get;
}
void SomeMethod();
// Other common stuff
}
public abstract class BaseDataAccess<T> : IBaseDataAccess<T>
{
private string _connectionString;
public BaseDataAccess(string connectionString)
{
_connectionString = connectionString;
}
public virtual IDbConnection Connection
{
get
{
return new SqlConnection(_connectionString);
}
}
public abstract void SomeMethod();
// Other common stuff
}
public class SpecificDataAccess<T> : BaseDataAccess<T>
{
public SpecificDataAccess(string connectionString) : base(connectionString)
{
}
public override void SomeMethod()
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
public void SomeSpecificMethod()
{
using (Connection)
{
// Do something here
}
}
}
Create a ConnectionStringProvider class that will provide you the connection string
public class ConnectionStringProvider
{
// store it statically so that every instance of connectionstringprovider
// uses the same value
private static string _customerConnectionString;
public string GetCustomerConnectionString()
{
return _customerConnectionString;
}
public void SetCustomerConnectionString(string connectionString)
{
_customerConnectionString = connectionString;
}
}
Using ConnectionStringProvider in your DAL
public class MyCustomerDAL
{
private ConnectionStringProvider _connectionStringProvider;
public MyCustomerDAL()
{
_connectionStringProvider = new ConnectionStringProvider();
}
public void UpdateSomeData(object data)
{
using (var con = new SqlConnection(
connectionString: _connectionStringProvider.GetCustomerConnectionString()))
{
//do something awesome with the connection and data
}
}
}
Setting/changing the connection string
new ConnectionStringProvider()
.SetCustomerConnectionString(connString);
Note
The reason i chose to use method instead of a get/set property in ConnectionStringProvider is because maybe in the future you decide to read/write these from a file, and while you could read/write from file in a property it's misleading to your consumer who thinks that a property will be a simple performance-less hit.
Using a function tells your consumer there might be some performance hit here, so use it wisely.
A little abstration for unit testing
Here is a slight variation that will enable you to abstract for unit testing (and eventually IoC)
public class MyCustomerDAL
{
private IConnectionStringProvider _connectionStringProvider;
public MyCustomerDAL()
{
//since not using IoC, here you have to explicitly new it up
_connectionStringProvider = new ConnectionStringProvider();
}
//i know you don't want constructor, i included this to demonstrate how you'd override for writing tests
public MyCustomerDAL(IConnectionStringProvider connectionStringProvider)
{
_connectionStringProvider = connectionStringProvider;
}
public void UpdateSomeData(object data)
{
using (var con = new SqlConnection(
connectionString: _connectionStringProvider.GetCustomerConnectionString()))
{
//do something awesome with the connection and data
}
}
}
// this interface lives either in a separate abstraction/contracts library
// or it could live inside of you DAL library
public interface IConnectionStringProvider
{
string GetCustomerConnectionString();
void SetCustomerConnectionString(string connectionString);
}
public class ConnectionStringProvider : IConnectionStringProvider
{
// store it statically so that every instance of connectionstringprovider uses the same value
private static string _customerConnectionString;
public string GetCustomerConnectionString()
{
return _customerConnectionString;
}
public void SetCustomerConnectionString(string connectionString)
{
_customerConnectionString = connectionString;
}
}
Appendix A - Using IoC and DI
Disclaimer: the goal of this next piece about IoC is not to say one way is right or wrong, it's merely to bring up the idea as another way to approach solving the problem.
For this particular situation Dependency Injection would make your solving the problem super simple; specifically if you were using an IoC container combined with constructor injection.
I don't mean it would make the code more simple, that would be more or less the same, it would make the mental side of "how do I easily get some service into every DAL class?" an easy answer; inject it.
I know you said you don't want to change the constructor. That's cool, you don't want to change it because it is a pain to change all the places of instantiation.
However, if everything were being created by IoC, you would not care about adding to constructors because you would never invoke them directly.
Then, you could add services like your new IConnectionStringProvider right to the constructor and be done with it.

looking for samples on how to user services.add* in asp.vnext

I would like to know where can I find samples the explains the differences among services.AddInstance, services.AddScoped, services.AddSingleton and service.AddTransient.
I found some articles that explain the point in a generic way, but I think a source sample is much more clear.
The scope of this questions is rather large, but since it seems you are specifically looking for AddScoped information I narrowed the sample down to scoping inside a web application.
Inside a web application AddScoped will mean pretty much the scope of the request. EntityFramework is using scoping internally, but it doesn't affect the user code in most cases so I'm sticking with the user code as shown below.
If you register a DbContext as a service, and also register a scoped service, for each request you will get a single instance of the scoped service where you resolve the DbContext.
The example code below should make it clearer. In general I would recommend just trying it out the way I'm showing it below to familiarize yourself with the behavior, by stepping through the code in the debugger. Start from an empty web application. Note the code I'm showing is from Beta2 (since in Beta2 we added the [FromServices] attribute which makes it easier to demonstrate, the underlying behavior is the same regardless of version.
startup.cs
public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
// Add EF services to the services container.
services.AddEntityFramework(Configuration)
.AddSqlServer()
.AddDbContext<UserDbContext>();
services.AddScoped<UserService>();
// Add MVC services to the services container.
services.AddMvc();
}
UserDbContext.cs
public class UserDbContext : DbContext
{
public UserService UserService { get; }
public UserDbContext(UserService userService)
{
_userService = userService;
}
}
HomeController.cs
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private UserDbContext _dbContext;
public HomeController(UserDbContext dbContext)
{
_dbContext = dbContext;
}
public string Index([FromServices]UserDbContext dbContext, [FromServices]UserService userService)
{
// [FromServices] is available start with Beta2, and will resolve the service from DI
// dbContext == _ctrContext
// and of course dbContext.UserService == _ctrContext.UserService;
if (dbContext != _dbContext) throw new InvalidOperationException();
if (dbContext.UserService != _dbContext.UserService) throw new InvalidOperationException();
if (dbContext.UserService != userService) throw new InvalidOperationException();
return "Match";
}
}
Alternatively if you resolve the user service from another service, this time registered as transient the transient service will have a new instance everytime it is resolved, but the scoped service will remain the same within the scope of the request.
Create the new service
public class AnotherUserService
{
public UserService UserService { get; }
public AnotherUserService(UserService userService)
{
UserService = userService;
}
}
Add the following lines to startup.cs
services.AddTransient<AnotherUserService>();
And rewrite the HomeController.cs as follows
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private AnotherUserService _anotherUserService;
public HomeController(AnotherUserService anotherUserService)
{
_anotherUserService = anotherUserService;
}
public string Index([FromServices]AnotherUserService anotherUserService,
[FromServices]UserService userService)
{
// Since another user service is tranient we expect a new instance
if (anotherUserService == _anotherUserService)
throw new InvalidOperationException();
// but the scoped service should remain the same instance
if (anotherUserService.UserService != _anotherUserService.UserService)
throw new InvalidOperationException();
if (anotherUserService.UserService != userService)
throw new InvalidOperationException();
return "Match";
}
}

Entity Framework 5 - How to change connection string for unit testing?

This is my first foray into Entity Framework, and I have a working project with EF5 and the repository pattern. I want to do integration testing against a live DB. I made a snapshot of my existing production database and wrote a stored procedure to recreate a fresh snapshot every time I want to run tests. My question is how to I switch my context to this database snapshot when "in unit testing mode"? In my app.config I have both my live and test connection strings as such:
<connectionStrings>
<add name="ReportingDbContext" connectionString="Server=LiveServer;Database=UnifiedReporting;User Id='myuser';Password='mypass';Trusted_Connection=False" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
<add name="TestingDbContext" connectionString="Server=LiveServer;Database=UnifiedReportingSnapshot;User Id='myuser';Password='mypass';Trusted_Connection=False" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>
As it stands now, I have my DbContext with the entities I want to use as follows:
public class ReportingDbContext : DbContext
{
public ReportingDbContext() : base("name=ReportingDbContext") // as per my app.config
{
}
// inventory
public DbSet<ComputerEntity> Computers { get; set; }
public DbSet<NetworkAdapterEntity> NetworkAdapters { get; set; }
// ... plus a whole bunch more
}
What I think I need to do is change the base("name=ReportingDbContext") into ("name=TestingDbContext"), but given how I have my Repository/UnitOfWork setup I'm not seeing how I can do so. The issue may be here in my UnitOfWork:
public interface IUnitOfWork : IDisposable
{
void Commit();
// inventory
IRepository<ComputerEntity> Computers { get; }
IRepository<NetworkAdapterEntity> NetworkAdapters { get; }
// ... plus a bunch more
}
public class UnitOfWork : IUnitOfWork
{
private readonly ReportingDbContext _dbContext = null;
public UnitOfWork()
{
_dbContext = new ReportingDbContext();
}
public void Commit()
{
_dbContext.SaveChanges();
}
// Inventory
public IRepository<ComputerEntity> Computers {get { return new Repository<ComputerEntity>(_dbContext); }}
public IRepository<NetworkAdapterEntity> NetworkAdapters { get { return new Repository<NetworkAdapterEntity>(_dbContext); } }
// ... lots more
}
This UnitOfWork has been great is that I can do a bunch of stuff to all my repositories and save it in one shot without having a bunch of contexts floating around to synchronize. It may or may not be relevant to this question, but this is how my UnitOfWork uses the repository. There is only 1 repository class, but it can be fed with any entity type needed:
public interface IRepository<T> where T : class
{
IQueryable<T> GetAll();
IQueryable<T> Find(Expression<Func<T, bool>> predicate);
T GetById(int id);
void Remove(T entity);
void Add(T newEntity);
}
public class Repository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : class
{
protected DbContext DbContext { get; set; }
protected DbSet<T> DbSet { get; set; }
public Repository(DbContext dbContext)
{
if (dbContext == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException("dbContext");
}
DbContext = dbContext;
DbSet = DbContext.Set<T>();
}
public IQueryable<T> GetAll()
{
return DbSet;
}
// ... more implementation of the interface, nothing fancy
}
The endpoint of where this magic is used is inside my WCF service. This is where I want to actually run through an integration test. A particular method in my service initializes a unit of work and uses that do stuff. The UnitOfWork creates a ReportingDbContext when it is new'd up, and this ReportingDbContext in turn refers to the connection string of "name=ReportingDbContext". After much reading, I think the answer is to use an IoC container like Unity or Ninject (haven't used one before, but I'd like to), and I'm stuck on how to implement IoC in this situation. Here is an example method that I'm using in my WCF service that seems rather hardcoded to the live database connection string:
public ComputerDTO GetComputerDetails(string hostname, string client)
{
// don't worry about the return type, it's defined elsewhere
using (var uoW = new UnitOfWork())
{
var repo = uoW.Computers;
var computer = repo.Find(x => x.Hostname == hostname && x.CompanyEntity.Name == client).FirstOrDefault();
// do stuff
}
}
I'd like to keep my connection strings inside my app.config if at all possible and be able to somehow switch to the testing connection string during the [SetUp] part of my NUnit testing of the methods in my WCF service.
I alway s use a separate unit test project with an App.config of its own. The connection string has the same name as in the main app but the database connection is different.
When you run unit test, e.g. from within Visual Studio, in the background a unit test runner is executed that is nothing but a regular application with its own configuration, the app.config.
You can start and dispose contexts for each test. Most unit test frameworks have attributes to mark methods as setup/teardown fixtures that can either run per test fixture or per test. You could initialize an IoC container in a test fixture setup ([TestFixtureSetUp] in NUnit) and a context in a test setup ([SetUp] in NUnit).
For some scenarios we use scripts to ensure and restore database state, but for most test we start a TransactionScope in the test setup and dispose it (without committing) in the test teardown. This conveniently rolls back any changes made in the test, but the database changes made in the tests are for real.

Ninject property binding, how to do correctly

I have installed Ninject (v4.0.30319) package in test project to test. Create test code below, unfortunately ValidateAbuse.Instance.Repository is always Null. Why Ninject do not bind repository to ValidateAbuse.Repository property?
Some of you may suggest to use constructor binding but I can't use it due to code structure. The below code is just example and I need to find a way to bind to property.
Test method which always fail
[TestMethod]
public void PropertyInjection()
{
using (IKernel kernel = new StandardKernel())
{
kernel.Bind<ISettingsRepository>().To<SettingsRepository>();
Assert.IsNotNull(ValidateAbuse.Instance.Repository);
}
}
The repository interface
public interface ISettingsRepository
{
List<string> GetIpAbuseList();
List<string> GetSourceAbuseList();
}
The repository implementation
public class SettingsRepository : ISettingsRepository
{
public List<string> GetIpAbuseList()
{
return DataAccess.Instance.Abuses.Where(p => p.TypeId == 1).Select(p => p.Source).ToList();
}
public List<string> GetSourceAbuseList()
{
return DataAccess.Instance.Abuses.Where(p => p.TypeId == 2).Select(p => p.Source).ToList();
}
}
The class to which I am trying to bind repository
public class ValidateAbuse
{
[Inject]
public ISettingsRepository Repository { get; set; }
public static ValidateAbuse Instance = new ValidateAbuse();
}
Ninject will only bind properties on an object when it creates an instance of that object. Since you are creating the instance of ValidateAbuse rather than Ninject creating it, it won't know anything about it and therefore be unable to set the property values upon creation.
EDIT:
You should remove the static singleton from ValidateAbuse and allow Ninject to manage it as a singleton.
kernel.Bind<ValidateAbuse>().ToSelf().InSingletonScope();
Then when you ask Ninject to create any class that needs an instance of ValidateAbuse, it will always get the same instance.
It seems like you don't fully understand how Ninject works or how to implement it so I would suggest you read the wiki https://github.com/ninject/ninject/wiki/How-Injection-Works and follow some more basic examples before trying to wire it into an existing application.