Question

In short: How would I check the type of a UI user control during a Silverlight unit test?

In detail: I am loading child views into a ContentControl on a parent view. During testing I want to check that the correct view has been loaded at the correct time. My views are in separate projects, and I don’t want to add a reference to those assemblies into my test project for the parent view (too tightly coupled).

This is where I am stuck:

[TestMethod]
[Asynchronous]
[Description("Test to confirm that upon initial class creation, the login view is loaded as the default content for the TaskRegion.")]
public void Shell_Initialisation_LoginViewIsLoadedByDefault()
{
   Shell shell = new Shell();

   //helper method from Justin Angels example 
   WaitFor(shell, "Loaded");

   TestPanel.Children.Add(shell);

   Shell_ViewModel viewModel = shell.DataContext as Shell_ViewModel;

   EnqueueCallback(() => Assert.IsTrue(viewModel.TaskRegionContent is **How do I reference my control type**));

   EnqueueTestComplete();
}

Should I be using mocking?

(The WaitFor is a helper method supplied by Justin Angel)

Answer 1

How about using GetType()? You can then use various methods on the Type instance to check whether it is an instance of type, or inherited from, the type.

Assert.IsInstanceOfType(viewModel.TaskRegionContent, typeof(Control))

Where “Control” above is the type of interest that you want to check.

See also: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.visualstudio.testtools.unittesting.assert.isinstanceoftype(VS.80).aspx