Integration testing aide for MVC core routing

Sometimes unit tests just don’t cut it. This is where integration tests come in. This however brings a whole new set of issues with finding the beast way to isolate the aspects under test and mock everything else away.

Problem statement

Suppose, we’ve got an api and a test that needs to make an http call to our api endpoint, like so:

 [ApiController]
  public class TestController : ControllerBase {

    public IActionResult OkTest() {
      return Ok(true);
    }
  }
.....
public class TestControllerTests {

    private readonly HttpClient _client;

    public TestControllerTests() {
      _client = TestSetup.GetTestClient();
    }

    [Test]
    public async Task OkTest() {
      var path = GetPathHere(nameof(OkTest)); // should return "/api/test/oktest".
      var response = await _client.GetAsync(path);
      response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
    }
}

Solution

Knowing that ASP.NET Core comes with such a lightweight package now, and exposes so many extensibility points, one approach we found efficient was to build up the whole Host and query its properties:

private string GetPathHere(string actionName)
    {
        var host = Program.CreateWebHostBuilder(new string[] { }).Build();
        host.Start();
        IActionDescriptorCollectionProvider provider = (host.Services as ServiceProvider).GetService<IActionDescriptorCollectionProvider>();
        return provider.ActionDescriptors.Items.First(i => (i as ControllerActionDescriptor)?.ActionName == actionName).AttributeRouteInfo.Template;
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void OkTestShouldBeFine()
    {
        var path = GetPathHere(nameof(ValuesController.OkTest)); // "api/test/oktest"
    }

Applicability

This is pretty basic case we’ve been dealing with, and the code makes quite a few assumptions. This approach however seems to hold up pretty well and surely will be our starting point next time round we test MVC actions!