Question

I am trying to test my real data by actually hitting the database. I am actually testing my Repository classes. Here is an example of what I am doing;

/// <summary>
/// Summary description for Country
/// </summary>
[TestClass]
public class Country {

    public Country() {
        _countryRepo = new CountryRepository();
    }

    private ICountryRepository _countryRepo;

    [TestMethod]
    public void db_should_return_at_least_one_country_as_approved_all() {

        //Act
        var model = _countryRepo.GetAll();

        //Assert
        Assert.IsTrue(model.Count() >= 1);
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void db_should_return_at_least_one_country_as_approved_true() { 

        //Act
        var model = _countryRepo.GetAll(ApprovalStatus.Approved);

        //Assert
        Assert.IsTrue(model.Count() >= 1);
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void db_should_return_Turkey_as_country_name_by_id() {

        //Act
        var model = _countryRepo.GetSingle(1000);

        //Assert
        Assert.AreEqual<string>("Turkey", model.CountryName);

    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void db_should_return_Turkey_as_country_name_by_countryISO3166Code() {

        //Act
        var model = _countryRepo.GetSingle("TR");

        //Assert
        Assert.AreEqual<string>("Turkey", model.CountryName);

    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void db_should_return_Turkey_as_country_name_by_GUID() {

        //Act
        var model = _countryRepo.GetSingle(Guid.Parse("9AF174A6-D0F7-4393-AAAD-B168BADEDB30"));

        //Assert
        Assert.AreEqual<string>("Turkey", model.CountryName);

    }

}

This works pretty well for my needs but wondering if I am doing it right by the book. Is there any other patterns that I really should be following here. I do not want to fake my data, my real intense here is to test my DAL and real production data.

Answer 1

Your tests will fail if someone else (or even you) go to your database and create a new approved country or change your country name. You are going to think: “WTH is wrong with my repository, why is it not working as expected?” But yeah, the problem isn’t with the repository.

When I write tests that hit the database I like to create the DB and load default values at startup and destroy then all right after that. I’m not sure if this is the best alternative, but it works pretty well. The problem with this approach is that it’s slower and there is more to code.