Question

Here is the unit test:

[TestFixture]
public class HomeControllerTests
{
    [Test]
    public void Index_GET_Asks_For_Index_View()
    {
        HomeController controller = new HomeController();
        ViewResult result = controller.Index();
        Assert.AreEqual("Index", result.ViewName);
    }
}

Basically I want to make sure when I visit the Index action method that I invoke the correct view. However, the test fails and I don’t know why.

—— Test started: Assembly: Demo.Tests.dll ——

Test
‘Demo.Tests.HomeControllerTests.Index_GET_Asks_For_Index_View’
failed:

Expected string length 5 but was 0. Strings differ at index 0.

Expected: “Index”

But was: ———–^ HomeControllerTests.cs(19,0): at
Demo.Tests.HomeControllerTests.Index_GET_Asks_For_Index_View()

Here is the actual controller code:

public ViewResult Index()
{
    ViewBag.Message = "This is just a demo.";
    return View();
}

Answer 1

See this reference with an empty call to View(). Here is a quote from that MSDN article:

This method overload of the View class returns a ViewResult object
that has an empty ViewName property. If you are writing unit tests for
controller actions, take into account the empty ViewName property for
unit tests that do not take a string view name.