Question

I’ve built a data access layer using a generic repository and the unit of work pattern together with Entity Framwork Code First. Unit testing the repositories seems worthless to me so I’ve decided to create some integrations tests instead. To do that I’ve created a project dedicated to the intregrations test and added a custom database initializer, which is going to seed the database with some test data, using a different connection string of course.

My Question is: How and when do I Initialize the database in my test code? I’m using Nunit. Also I like to know – Since my repositories uses a generic implementation – should I test every repository In my Unit Of Work or just choose a random one?

My Code looks like this:

public interface IRepository<T> where T:class, IEntity
{
    void Add(T entity);
    T GetById(int id);
    IQueryable<T> All();
    IQueryable<T> Where(Expression<Func<T, bool>> filter);
    void Update(T entity);
    void Delete(T entity);
}

 public interface IUnitOfWork : IDisposable
 {
        IRepository<Album> Albums { get; }
        IRepository<Genre> Genres { get; }
        IRepository<Artist> Artists { get; }
        void Commit();
  }  

public class EFRepository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : class,IEntity
{
    private DbContext _context;
    private DbSet<T> _set;

    public EFRepository(IMvcStoreContext context)
    {
        if (context == null)
            throw new NullReferenceException("context is null");

        _context = context as DbContext;

        _set = _context.Set<T>();

    }

    public void Add(T newEntity)
    {
        _set.Add(newEntity);
    }

    public T GetById(int id)
    {
        return _set.Find(id);
    }

    public IQueryable<T> All()
    {
        return _set;
    }

    public IQueryable<T> Where(Expression<Func<T, bool>> filter)
    {
        return _set.Where(filter);
    }

    public void Update(T entity)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException("method not implemented");
    }

    public void Delete(T entity)
    {
        _set.Remove(entity);
    }
}

Answer 1

I came here looking for the answer to your second question, so I don’t have the answer to that one.
For database testing, I use NDBUnit.
I put the setup and teardown in the TestFixureXXX methods so I only have to seed the database once per test; this makes the slow tests run a little faster. If you need help with NDBUnit let me know.

Eric