Real Properties With Moq

They're real and they're spectacular!

• Keith Ott
• Tutorials
• April 19, 2019
• 2 Minutes

I was recently using the C# Moq mocking library, and I needed to not only initialize a property to a value, but I needed the property to be updated by the code.

The basic setup of my interfaces was like this:

interface IAccount
{
	IList<ITransaction> Transactions { get; set; }
}

interface ITransaction
{
	DateTime Timestamp { get; set; }
}

And the ASP.NET MVC controller code under test was doing this:

IAccount account;
account.Transactions = account.Transactions.OrderBy(x => x.Timestamp).ToList();

var viewModel = new OurViewModel();
viewModel.Account = account;

My test class initialized an IAccount like this:

var transactions = new List<ITransaction>
{
	new Transaction { Timestamp = new DateTime(2019, 03, 14) },
	new Transaction { Timestamp = new DateTime(2019, 01, 01) }
}

var mockIAccount = new Mock<IAccount>();
mockIAccount.Setup(x => x.Transactions).Returns(transaction);

I wanted to verify that the controller code would sort the Transactions correctly. I could try abusing VerifySet, but that would mean I’m testing the implementation rather than the outcome (not something I wanted to do). What I really needed was Moq to allow setting and reading this property. As it turns out, Moq can do this with SetupProperty!

For Moq to make a working property, simply call SetupProperty, optionally passing a second parameter that will set the initial property value.

mockIAccount.SetupProperty(x => x.Transactions, transactions);

Now, after we call out controller code, we can access the contents of this property in our test:

OurViewModel viewModel = ourController.CallUnderTest();
Assert.AreEqual(new DateTime(2019, 01, 01), viewModel.Account.Transactions[0].Timestamp);
Assert.AreEqual(new DateTime(2019, 03, 14), viewModel.Account.Transactions[1].Timestamp);

Pretty slick if you ask me!

P.S. Yes, I realize the real issue here is our controller shouldn’t be modifying the order of the Transactions in our Account class. No one ever said real software development was perfect.

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