In this post I'll give you a quick introduction into how you can test your ASP.NET Core Controllers.
Please note that the term "Integration Testing" also covers other cases, such as testing data access or accessing the file system.
Set up the project
A common guideline is to structure your ASP.NET Core projects in the following way:
.
├── src
│ └── MyProject.Api
│ └── Controllers
│ └── ValuesController
└── test
├── IntegrationTests
│ └── MyProject.Api.Test
│ └── ValuesControllerTest
└── UnitTests
Install the TestHost NuGet
Create a .NET Core Test project and then install the Microsoft.AspNetCore.TestHost package.
This package will provide options to configure the TestServer.
> Install-Package Microsoft.AspNetCore.TestHost
Create the base class
Create a base class that our ControllerTest classes can inherit from. We will set up the TestServer and HttpClient used to perform requests.
[TestClass]
public abstract class IntegrationTestInitializer
{
protected HttpClient _client;
[TestInitialize]
public void Setup()
{
var builder = new WebHostBuilder()
.UseStartup<Startup>();
var server = new TestServer(builder);
_client = server.CreateClient();
}
}
Create a ControllerTest
Let's pretend the Controller we want to test looks like this
[Route("api/[controller]")]
[ApiController]
public class ValuesController : ControllerBase
{
// GET api/values
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<string>> Get()
{
return new string[] { "value1", "value2" };
}
}
With the base class set up, we can then simply inherit from the base class and use our _client to perform requests against the API.
[TestClass]
public class ValuesControllerTest : IntegrationTestInitializer
{
[TestMethod]
public async Task CanGetValues()
{
List<string> expectedResponse = new List<string> { "value1", "value2" };
var responseJson = await _client.GetStringAsync("api/values");
List<string> actualResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<string>>(responseJson);
Assert.AreEqual(expectedResponse.Count, actualResponse.Count);
foreach(var expectedValue in expectedResponse)
{
Assert.IsTrue(actualResponse.Contains(expectedValue));
}
}
}
This post described how you can integration test a very basic ASP.NET Core API.
In the real world you'll probably have a database behind the API that must be accessed and some endpoints may also be protected by an API-Key or JWT.
This post however should only serve as a quick introduction into integration testing.
kai-oswald
/
IntegrationTestSample
An ASP.NET Core Sample project showcasing how to write integration tests
IntegrationTestSample
An ASP.NET Core Sample project showcasing how to integration test against Controllers
Oldest comments (10)
Hey, nice post! Just my two cents, but I believe you can use
Assert.Equalon collections as well, cleaning up quite a lot of code :)It doesn't, but there's a neat utility class for Collections called
CollectionAssertwhich I just found that does that!So the code could be cut to:
Good post. But how would you test authorized endpoints?
This depends on the authorization methods used to protect those endpoints.
For example if you use JWT you could generate your token in the
TestInitializeand set theAuthorizationheader on the client.I'm planning on doing another post going into more detail.
Good point.
But if you're ought to create and API for SPA, you'd probably consider not only 'header' implementation.
For those reasons I personally prefer to send JWT in HttpOnly cookie. Could you please cover this case as well?
Just published the second post covering Cookie and JWT authentication!
ASP.NET Core Integration Testing: Protected endpoints
Kai Oswald ・ Oct 7 ・ 4 min read
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