Test driven ECO

Here are my latest revelations 🙂

01
Instead of having to mock IEcoServiceProvider and IOclPsService in order to avoid DB access simply use PersistenceMapperMemory. This way I can create the objects I want, UpdateDatabase, and then run my tests. It’s much easier to read, and more importantly less typing.

02
My page controllers no longer use an EcoSpace. Instead the code always uses a ServiceProvider property of type IEcoServiceProvider. When I want to test my controller I create an instance and set its ServiceProvider property. Now whenever the controller needs to do anything it will go through the ServiceProvider I specified.

This is beneficial for a number of reasons. Firstly it means that I can create an EcoSpace in my test and set its PersistenceMapper to PersistenceMapperMemory before activating it. Secondly I can also opt to pass a mocked IEcoServiceProvider which either returns the real service requested or returns a mocked one. An example of this is that I validate my page by using a registered IConstraintProvider interface (defined in DroopyEyes.Eco.Validation). I can check that a controller action wont save a modified object it if is invalid. Instead of having to know how to make the object invalid I just mock the IConstraintProvider and have it always return a single constraint with the expression "false" so that it always fails. In addition, because I know the name of the constraint that is broken, I can then check ViewData["Errors"] and ensure that the controller action has displayed the error messages.

Sure I can just write the action in a minute and know it works, but having these test cases ensures that if someone else modifies my project’s source code without fully understanding what they are doing I will know what they broke. Or, they will know what they broke and can fix it themself!

So there you are. Same end result, less code.

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