Creating Mock with Moq around existing instance?

Question

Let's say we have integration test with extensive configuration IConfiguration. I've setup the test to work with autofac containers, and now I'd like to use Mock to replace the operation on one of it's properties without the need to mock or replace everything else:

var config = MyTestContainer.Resolve<IConfiguration>();
//let's say that config.UseFeatureX = false;

//here, I'd like to create mock "around" the existing instance:
var mockedConfig = Mock.CreateWith(config);  //CreateWith => a method I'd like to find how to do
mockedConfig.Setup(c => c.UseFeatureX).Returns(true);

How to do this wrapping around existing instance? It should be similar to .CallBase but instead of just calling base implementation, I was hoping there would be a way to call base values.

Answer 1

I believe by default Moq allows you to pass constructor parameters for IConfiguration implementation and it will make a new instance of that class for you for you. If I understand your problem correctly you want to rather use a pre-constructed instance. I assume you are aware of CallBase and it does not quite do what you need.

So basically, the following snippet illustrates the issue:

//suppose we've got a class:
public class A
{
    public string Test {get;set;}
    public virtual string ReturnTest() => Test;
}
//and some code below:
void Main()
{
    var config = new A() {
        Test = "TEST"
    } ;

    var mockedConfig = new Mock<A>(); // first we run a stock standard mock
    mockedConfig.CallBase = true; // we will enable CallBase just to point out that it makes no difference  
    var o = mockedConfig.Object;
    Console.WriteLine(o.ReturnTest()); // this will be null because Test has not been initialised from constructor
    mockedConfig.Setup(c => c.ReturnTest()).Returns("mocked"); // of course if you set up your mocks - you will get the value
    Console.WriteLine(o.ReturnTest()); // this will be "mocked" now, no surprises
}

now, knowing that Moq internally leverages Castle DynamicProxy and it actually allows us to generate proxies for instances (they call it Class proxy with target). Therefore the question is - how do we get Moq to make one for us. It seems there's no such option out of the box, and simply injecting the override didn't quite go well as there's not much inversion of control inside the library and most of the types and properties are marked as internal, making inheritance virtually impossible.

Castle Proxy is however much more user firendly and has quite a few methods exposed and available for overriding. So let us define a ProxyGenerator class that would take the method Moq calls and add required functionality to it (just compare CreateClassProxyWithTarget and CreateClassProxy implementations - they are almost identical!)

MyProxyGenerator.cs

class MyProxyGenerator : ProxyGenerator
{
    object _target;

    public MyProxyGenerator(object target) {
        _target = target; // this is the missing piece, we'll have to pass it on to Castle proxy
    }
    // this method is 90% taken from the library source. I only had to tweak two lines (see below)
    public override object CreateClassProxy(Type classToProxy, Type[] additionalInterfacesToProxy, ProxyGenerationOptions options, object[] constructorArguments, params IInterceptor[] interceptors)
    {
        if (classToProxy == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("classToProxy");
        }
        if (options == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("options");
        }
        if (!classToProxy.GetTypeInfo().IsClass)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("'classToProxy' must be a class", "classToProxy");
        }
        CheckNotGenericTypeDefinition(classToProxy, "classToProxy");
        CheckNotGenericTypeDefinitions(additionalInterfacesToProxy, "additionalInterfacesToProxy");
        Type proxyType = CreateClassProxyTypeWithTarget(classToProxy, additionalInterfacesToProxy, options); // these really are the two lines that matter
        List<object> list =  BuildArgumentListForClassProxyWithTarget(_target, options, interceptors);       // these really are the two lines that matter
        if (constructorArguments != null && constructorArguments.Length != 0)
        {
            list.AddRange(constructorArguments);
        }
        return CreateClassProxyInstance(proxyType, list, classToProxy, constructorArguments);
    }
}

if all of the above was relativaly straightforward, actually feeding it into Moq is going to be somewhat of a hack. As I mentioned, most of the structures are marked internal so we'll have to use reflection to get through:

MyMock.cs

public class MyMock<T> : Mock<T>, IDisposable where T : class
{
    void PopulateFactoryReferences()
    {
        // Moq tries ridiculously hard to protect their internal structures - pretty much every class that could be of interest to us is marked internal
        // All below code is basically serving one simple purpose = to swap a `ProxyGenerator` field on the `ProxyFactory.Instance` singleton
        // all types are internal so reflection it is
        // I will invite you to make this a bit cleaner by obtaining the `_generatorFieldInfo` value once and caching it for later
        var moqAssembly = Assembly.Load(nameof(Moq));
        var proxyFactoryType = moqAssembly.GetType("Moq.ProxyFactory");
        var castleProxyFactoryType = moqAssembly.GetType("Moq.CastleProxyFactory");     
        var proxyFactoryInstanceProperty = proxyFactoryType.GetProperty("Instance");
        _generatorFieldInfo = castleProxyFactoryType.GetField("generator", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);     
        _castleProxyFactoryInstance = proxyFactoryInstanceProperty.GetValue(null);
        _originalProxyFactory = _generatorFieldInfo.GetValue(_castleProxyFactoryInstance);//save default value to restore it later
    }

    public MyMock(T targetInstance) {       
        PopulateFactoryReferences();
        // this is where we do the trick!
        _generatorFieldInfo.SetValue(_castleProxyFactoryInstance, new MyProxyGenerator(targetInstance));
    }

    private FieldInfo _generatorFieldInfo;
    private object _castleProxyFactoryInstance;
    private object _originalProxyFactory;

    public void Dispose()
    {
         // you will notice I opted to implement IDisposable here. 
         // My goal is to ensure I restore the original value on Moq's internal static class property in case you will want to mix up this class with stock standard implementation
         // there are probably other ways to ensure reference is restored reliably, but I'll leave that as another challenge for you to tackle
        _generatorFieldInfo.SetValue(_castleProxyFactoryInstance, _originalProxyFactory);
    }
}

given we've got the above working, the actual solution would look like so:

    var config = new A()
    {
        Test = "TEST"
    };
    using (var superMock = new MyMock<A>(config)) // now we can pass instances!
    {
        superMock.CallBase = true; // you still need this, because as far as Moq is oncerned it passes control over to CastleDynamicProxy   
        var o1 = superMock.Object;
        Console.WriteLine(o1.ReturnTest()); // but this should return TEST
    }

hopefully this helps.