Set User property for an ApiController in Unit Test

Question

My unit tests for an ApiController uses some helpers methods to instantiate the controller:

public static ResourcesController SetupResourcesController(HttpRequestMessage request, IResourceMetadataRepository repo, IUnitOfWorkService unitOfWorkService) {     var config = new HttpConfiguration();     var defaultRoute = config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(RouteNames.DefaultApi , "api/{controller}/{id}");     var routeData = new HttpRouteData(defaultRoute, new HttpRouteValueDictionary { { "controller", "resources" } });      var resourcesController = new ResourcesController(repo, unitOfWorkService)     {         ControllerContext = new HttpControllerContext(config, routeData, request),         Request = request     };     resourcesController.Request.Properties.Add(HttpPropertyKeys.HttpRouteDataKey, routeData);     resourcesController.Request.Properties[HttpPropertyKeys.HttpConfigurationKey] = config;      // Compilation fail: The Property 'System.Web.Http.ApiController.User' has no setter.     resourcesController.User = myStubUserPrincipal;      return resourcesController; } 

My question is: how to set the User property for the controller?

I've tried:

request.Properties.Add("MS_UserPrincipal", myStubUserPrincipal); 

But this doesn't work either (the resourcesController.User property remains null).

Answer 1

Set the Thread.CurrentPrincipal, and that will initialize the User property in the controller automatically.

For people that see this answer, but have no idea how to set CurrentPrincipal.: This code is extracted from MSDN.

Thread.CurrentPrincipal = new GenericPrincipal (    new GenericIdentity("Bob", "Passport"),    new[] {"managers", "executives"} ); 

Answer 2

A cleaner way would be to mock away IPrincipal and HttpRequestContext, for example using Moq:

var userMock = new Mock<IPrincipal>(); userMock.Setup(p => p.IsInRole("admin")).Returns(true); userMock.SetupGet(p => p.Identity.Name).Returns("tester"); userMock.SetupGet(p => p.Identity.IsAuthenticated).Returns(true);  var requestContext = new Mock<HttpRequestContext>(); requestContext.Setup(x => x.Principal).Returns(userMock.Object);  var controller = new ControllerToTest() {     RequestContext = requestContext.Object,     Request = new HttpRequestMessage(),     Configuration = new HttpConfiguration() };