How to test PARTIAL view was rendered in C# ASP .NET MVC

Question

I have a view and it has partial view rendering inside:

<div class="partialViewDiv">
    @Html.RenderPartial("partial", Model.SomeModelProperty);
</div>

And a controller, which returns this view

public ActionResult Action()
        {
            ...
            var model = new SomeModel(){SomeModelProperty = "SomeValue"}
            return View("view", model);
        }

How to test view was rendered i know:

[TestMethod]
public void TestView()
{
   ...
   var result = controller.Action();

   // Assert
   result.AssertViewRendered().ForView("view").WithViewData<SomeModel>();
}

but when I call

result.AssertPartialViewRendered().ForView("partial").WithViewData<SomeModelPropertyType>();

I get this error message

Expected result to be of type PartialViewResult. It is actually of type ViewResult.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

What am I doing wrong?

You're testing the controller: such tests essentially mock the view and just verify that the controller is returning the expected view (and model).

Because the View "view" that renders the PartialView "partial" is not involved in the testing, so you can't test whether it's doing what you expect.

In general, most people don't unit test Views; but if you want to do so look at this blog or google for "MVC unit test view"