Sunday, March 6, 2011

How can I unit test my ASP.NET MVC controller that uses FormsAuthentication?

I'm working with a ASP.NET MVC solution in a test driven manner and I want to login a user to my application using forms authentication. The code I would like to end up with in the controller looks something like this:

FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(userName, false);

My question is how do I write a test to justify this code?

Is there a way to check that the SetAuthCookie method was called with the correct parameters?

Is there any way of injecting a fake/mock FormsAuthentication?

From stackoverflow
  • I would start by writing an interface and a wrapper class that will encapsulate this logic and then use the interface in my controller:

    public interface IAuth 
    {
        void DoAuth(string username, bool remember);
    }
    
    public class FormsAuthWrapper : IAuth 
    {
        public void DoAuth(string username, bool remember) 
        {
            FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(userName, remember);
        }
    }
    
    public class MyController : Controller 
    {
        private readonly IAuth _auth;
        public MyController(IAuth auth) 
        {
            _auth = auth;
        }
    
    }
    

    Now IAuth could be easily mocked in a unit test and verify that the controller calls the expected methods on it. I would NOT unit test the FormsAuthWrapper class because it just delegates the call to the FormsAuthentication which does what it is supposed to do (Microsoft guarantee :-)).

    chadmyers : +1 on this, don't test other people's frameworks, just YOUR usage of THEM. We do the same (similar) thing in our app (wrap FormsAuth stuff, etc)
    maz : *sigh* Microsoft is so proud of this framework being SO testable! I was hoping there was some built in way to mock this without wrapping. Guess not :(

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