Issue Unit Testing Sitecore and Glass with NUNIT

Question

We've been testing our Sitecore code with the codeflood but wanted to do more to automate our tests on local and CI builds. I've been following the solution laid out by Mike Edwards on how to use NUNIT to run Sitecore tests -

• http://www.experimentsincode.com/?p=232

Later, Dan Solovay had posted some thoughts on how to improve that -

• http://www.dansolovay.com/2013/01/sitecore-nunit-testing-simplified.html

So far this works great in a visual studio build. Config is copied from the Sitecore web site to the test project and NUNIT can execute tests that retrieve items from Sitecore, all without a context.

My problem - we make use of Glass Mapper for things like this:

Database database = global::Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("master");
ISitecoreService SitecoreService = new SitecoreService(database);

var catalogItem = database.GetItem([guid to our item]);
Assert.IsNotNull(catalogItem);

var catalog = SitecoreService.CreateType<ProductCatalog>(catalogItem, true, true);
Assert.NotNull(catalog);
Assert other things on our ProductCatalog class...

The problem seems to be that Glass Mapper's SitecoreService constructor needs a context and if it doesn't get one, it uses "Default". Since we're executing in NUNIT, there isn't a context and the creation of Sitecore Service fails.

I doubt there is a clear cut answer that fixes this but I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts.

Maybe the use of Glass Mapper in the test just isn't possible without the Sitecore context. On the other hand, I am by no means a Glass expert - maybe there is a different way to go about mapping my class in the test?

Answer 1

The Glass SitecoreService and SitecoreContext both have interfaces, your tests should mock this interfaces using a mock framework like NSubstitute or MOQ. For example using NSubstitute:

var product = new ProductCatalog();  
product.Title = "Hello world";  

ISitecoreService service = Substitute.For<ISitecoreService();
service.GetItem([Guid]).Returns(product);

var result = service.GetItem([Guid]);

Assert.AreEqual("Hello world", result.Title);

Your test above seems to be testing if Glass returns an item rather than testing the business logic of your application. You should avoid these sorts of tests.