Question

This is not really specific to Moq but more of a general Mocking framework question. I have created a mock object for an object of type, “IAsset”. I would like to mock the type that is returned from IAsset ‘s getter, “Info”.

 var mock = new Mock<IAsset>();
        mock.SetupGet(i => i.Info).Returns(//want to pass back a mocked abstract);
        mock.SetupProperty(g => g.Id, Guid.NewGuid());

The problem I am running into is Mocking this returned property value.

 mock.SetupGet(i => i.Info).Returns(//this is the type I need to mock);

The property holds an abstract type. This type extends XDocument.

public abstract class SerializableNodeTree : XDocument, ISerializable{...}

So.. what I would like to do is this:

 var nodeTreeMock = new Mock<SerializableNodeTree>();
        nodeTreeMock .SetupGet(d => d.Document).Returns(xdoc);

xdoc is a XDocument instance. This will not work because the XDocument.Document getter is not virtual. Which makes sense.

Should I just hand code a mock that is derived from SerializableNodeTree or is this there a way to Mock this object?

Answer 1

In a case like this, I would treat XDocument as a standard, non-mockable object like strings and most POCOs and native types. That is to say, you should create a real (non-mocked) SerializableNodeTree to return from IAsset.Info.

Another option is to make SerializableNodeTree implement an interface that has all the methods you want to mock, and have IAsset.Info return that interface type instead of a SerializableNodeTree directly.