Castle and Automock, avoid resolving properties

I use AutoMockingContainer extensively in my test projects, and I ‘ve build over time an automocking container that satisfy all of my needs. Thanks to Castle Windsor, using complex logic with the AutomockingContainer is a breeze. Suppose you have this ViewModel

Figure 1: ViewModel under test

The only aspect I’m interested in is the SelectedLinkResult public property, that have a lot of logic in the set part, this is needed to react on user selection change in the UI. Now when I use AutoMockingContainer to automock this view model I have a big problem, I need to setup a lot of expectations to make the setter logic to work, this because when I try to resolve with automock, my AutoMockingContainer try to resolve each dependency, even properties. To avoid this I need to be able to tell my container

1. Avoid to resolve any property
2. Avoid to resolve dependencies with specific name

The second one is needed if I want some properties to be resolved and some other to be excluded, so I needs to extend my container with a couple of properties.

   1: public List<String> DependencyToIgnore { get; set; }

   2:  

   3: public Boolean  ResolveProperties { get; set; }

   4:  

   5: public Boolean CanSatisfyDependencyKey(String dependencyKey)

   6: {

   7:    return !DependencyToIgnore.Contains(dependencyKey);

   8: }

I’ve added a List of property name to ignore, a property that specify if I want properties to be resolved, and finally a simple function that tells if a specific property needs to be resolved. Thanks to Castle, I can use these properties from the subresolver used by the container.

   1: public bool CanResolve(

   2:      CreationContext context,

   3:      ISubDependencyResolver parentResolver,

   4:      ComponentModel model,

   5:      DependencyModel dependency)

   6: {

   7:     bool shouldResolveDependencyKey = 

   8:         dependency.DependencyType == DependencyType.Service &&

   9:         _relatedRepository.CanSatisfyDependencyKey(dependency.DependencyKey);

  10:  

  11:     Boolean resolveIfProperty = 

  12:         !dependency.IsOptional || 

  13:         _relatedRepository.ResolveProperties;

  14:  

  15:     return shouldResolveDependencyKey && resolveIfProperty;

  16: }

First of all I check if the dependencyType is Service and calls the CAnSatisfyDependencyKey of the subresolver, then if the the dependency is optional (a property) and the ResolveProperties is false, I skip resolution. Now I can write a unit test header like this one:

   1: [TestFixture]

   2: [UseAutoMockingContainer(

   3:     new[] { typeof(TreeNavigatorViewModel) }, 

   4:     ResolveProperties = false)]

   5: public class TreeNavigatorViewModelFixture : BaseTestFixtureWithHelper

This to avoid completely Property resolving during the test, the following one is used if I want only the SelectedLinkResult property not to be resolved with a Mock.

   1: [TestFixture]

   2: [UseAutoMockingContainer(

   3:     new[] { typeof(TreeNavigatorViewModel) }, 

   4:     IgnoreDependencies =  

   5:     new string[]

   6:     {

   7:        "SelectedLinkResult"                           

   8:     })]

   9: public class TreeNavigatorViewModelFixture : BaseTestFixtureWithHelper

This makes my tests really simple and simple to write.

alk.