Testing Entity Framework layer in database-first mode

In your app, you may have a “query” layer, where all your Linq queries are regrouped. If you don’t, you should. Having your queries inside your controller leads to poor testing and strong coupling.

You will want to test that your queries return what they say they return. In order to do that, you need to mock your Entity Framework entities container.

There is an awesome and complete tutorial here, explaining everything.

If you’re stuck on Visual Studio 2010, you will need to do a few things: first, download and install the ADO.NET DbContext Generator code template, so that your entities use the DbSet type. Then, open your Entity Framework container, right click inside and select “Add a code generation element” (or something like that, my VS is not in english) and select the DbContext elements you just downloaded. You will then be able to customize the way your entities are generated (awesome tool).

In all Visual Studio versions, if you’re not using code-first like the tutorial, you will have to modify the template generation to mark your entities list as virtual (so that they can be mocked). Open your xxx.Context.tt file, find the line with DbSet<<#=Code.Escape(entitySet.ElementType)#>> and add virtual in front of it. Now you can check out the generated xxx.Context.cs file to be sure it’s not doing crazy things.

While you’re at it, since you’re modifying the code templates, follow these awesome instructions to xml-document your generated entities.

Now, following the MSDN article, in your query tests (the ones returning a set of data), you will have to manually create the data to return, and “bind” it to the mock instance. Since you will have to do that in each of your query tests, don’t forget to extract it to a method:

/// <summary>
/// Sets up the mock set of entities to be used in tests
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T">The type of the entities</typeparam>
/// <param name="mockSet">The mock set of entities to configure</param>
/// <param name="data">The data to use</param>
private void SetupMockEntities<T>(Mock mockSet, IQueryable<T> data)
{
    mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.Provider).Returns(data.Provider);
    mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.Expression).Returns(data.Expression);
    mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.ElementType).Returns(data.ElementType);
    mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.GetEnumerator()).Returns(data.GetEnumerator());
}

/// <summary>

/// Sets up the mock set of entities to be used in tests

/// </summary>

/// <typeparam name="T">The type of the entities</typeparam>

/// <param name="mockSet">The mock set of entities to configure</param>

/// <param name="data">The data to use</param>

private void SetupMockEntities<T>(Mock mockSet, IQueryable<T> data)

{

mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.Provider).Returns(data.Provider);

mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.Expression).Returns(data.Expression);

mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.ElementType).Returns(data.ElementType);

mockSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.GetEnumerator()).Returns(data.GetEnumerator());

}