Unit Testing in CSLA? How? What?

Question

Does anyone have an example of unit testing in CSLA. I find it difficult to implement TDD with this framework and was wondering if there is any simple ways of doing this. Is there any other Mock Framework I could use besides TypeMock Isolator that is for free to build my test object? Please if you have any suggestions and samples/examples, I would be delighted? Thank you.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I'm telling you some new information, but from CSLA 4 it's easier to unit test your custom BusinessRules and if you are using repositories as your data layer, you can mock the repositories to test the business objects together with the front end using them. Just remember that business objects aren't much more then a bunch of objects with properties where you should use Business Rules to implement business logic. Those Business Rules are just classes you can unit test without a problem.

It all depends on how your infrastructure is. Are you using a IoC pattern?

Which version of CSLA are you using?

Are you using the CSLA ObjectFactory's?

If you use CSLA as it should be used you'll have static factory methods and you have a non-public constructor. If you still want to unit test those properties inside the BusinessObjects you can choose out of some options.

1. If you use IoC for the datalayer (repositories) then you can mock those and test the business objects by configuring the IoC with mocks and stubs and in the testmethod call the factory methods and do your test.

2. If you don't use IoC, you might be lucky if you went for the CSLA ObjectFactory solution--there you can use mocks and stubs.

3. If you don't use IoC and didn't go for the ObjectFactory, you can't unit test the business objects that easily. But it's still possible by registering a custom DataPortal. Inside the DataPortal you can use reflection to construct the business object and resolve some mock/stub for that specific business object. It's not easy, but it's doable.

Sorry that I don't have any examples.