EF and Moq? Virtual methods required...

Question

I've been using EF with MVC to great success so far, and now need to put in some unit tests for another application that uses the same data framework.

As far as unit testing goes, we've opted for NUnit and Moq, however the problem comes with Moq's requirement that everything needs to be virtual. For example, in our other application, we've a simple line of code:

user.AddressReference.Load();
if (user.Address != null) user.Address.CountryReference.Load();

... so figured that to mock the user object we could use

private User CreateMockUser()
{
      var user = new Mock<User>();
      user.Setup(x => x.AddressReference.Load()).Raises(x => x.Address = null); // Should be *new* address
      return user.Object;
}

However since all the methods and properties generated by entity framework are not virtual, is there any way we can accomplish the above without trying to add an interface?

Suggestions and thoughts most welcome at the moment.

Thanks.
a user with Address

Answer 1

EF 3.5 doesn't go well with unit test because of the mocking problem. EF 4 has some solution to it, but moving to EF 4 depends on your project and requirements.

Read more here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2009/05/18/sneak-preview-entity-framework-4-0-testability-improvements.aspx

---

Please mark posts as answers/helpful if it answers your question

Answer 2

Seems as if there are a lot of things in EF4 that should ease some of the problems with EF3.5 - moving to it isn't an option at the moment though.

Any other suggestions? Both Moq and Rhino require overrideable/virtual properties in order to function, whilst Typemock claims to solve the problem but isn't free if used on a commercial project.