Question

I am trying to unit test an ASP.NET MVC 4 controller that is returning Kendo.UI.Mvc DataSource result wrapped as Json. The problem is that I cannot get to the returned the actual data .. it is always null.

The question is, how do I validate the JSON coming back from a Controller that wraps the Kendo.UI DataSourceResult.

Answer 1

This problem was infuriating because I could see the collection of data I wanted in VS while debugging. I have updated the test fixture – asserts on the model data can be performed.

Basically I did the following:

1. Cast the ActionResult as JsonResult
2. Using the dynamic type, get the “data” from the JsonResult which returned Kendo.Mvc.UI.DataSourceResult. Prior to using the dynamic type, only null was returned. (Note to self, learn more about the dynamic type)
3. Cast the result from step2 as the data type you want to test.

Controller:

    public ActionResult EditRead([DataSourceRequest] DataSourceRequest request)
    {      
        return Json(GetViewModel().ToDataSourceResult(request));           
    }

Unit Test:

    [Test]
    public void EditRead_Should_Read_List_Or_Pharmacies()
    {
        //Create test db
        var db = new FakePharmacyDirectoryDb();
        db.AddSet(TestData.PharmacyLocations(10));

        //setup controller, we need to mock a DataSourceRequest
        //that Kendo.Mvc uses to communicate with the View
        var controller = new DirectoryController(db);
        var kendoDataRequest = new DataSourceRequest();

        //get the result back from the controller
        var controllerResult = controller.EditRead(kendoDataRequest);

        //cast the results to Json
        var jsonResult = controllerResult as JsonResult;

        //at runtime, jsonRsult.Data data will return variable of type Kendo.Mvc.UI.DataSourceResult
        dynamic kendoResultData = jsonResult.Data;

        //... which you can then cast DataSourceResult.Data as
        //the return type you are trying to test
        var results = kendoResultData.Data as List<PharmacyLocation>;

        Assert.IsInstanceOf<List<PharmacyLocation>>(results);
        Assert.AreEqual(10,results.Count);
    }