Using Verify, Setup and Callback in the Moq Mocking Framework

This article is intended to explain the Verify, Setup and Callback features of the Moq unit testing framework with examples of how to use them.

Demo Console App

To have a piece of code to unit test, and also a dependency to mock I created a demo console app that will reverse a word and display it to the user. It uses the class WordUtils that has a dependency of UtilLogger (the dependency we'll be mocking) that's used to log a message to the console if this has been enabled in appsettings.json. You will also notice the word that's being reversed is stored in a simple cache (a dictionary object); this will be used to demonstrate the callback functionality.

WordUtils.cs

public class WordUtils : IWordUtils
{
    private readonly IUtilLogger _log;

    public const string REVERSE_ERROR_ENTER_A_WORD = 
        "Please enter a word to reverse.";

    public WordUtils(IUtilLogger log)
    {
        _log = log;
    }

    public string Reverse(string word)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(word))
            throw new ArgumentException(REVERSE_ERROR_ENTER_A_WORD);

        char[] charArray = word.ToCharArray();
        Array.Reverse(charArray);
        string reverseWord = new string(charArray);

        if (_log.IsLogEnabled())
            _log.LogInformation(
                $"The word \"{word}\" was reversed as \"{reverseWord}\"");

        // Add the word and the reversed word to the 
        // in-memory cache (a dictionary object)
        _log.AddToWordCache(word, reverseWord);

        return reverseWord;
    }
}

UtilLogger.cs

public class UtilLogger<T> : Logger<T>, IUtilLogger
{
    private readonly IOptions<LogOptions> _logOptions;

    public UtilLogger(
        IOptions<LogOptions> logOptions,
        ILoggerFactory logFactory)
        : base(logFactory)
    {
        _logOptions = logOptions;
    }

    private Dictionary<string, string> WordCache { get; set; } = 
        new Dictionary<string, string>();

    public bool IsLogEnabled() 
        => _logOptions.Value.IsLogEnabled;

    public void AddToWordCache(string word, string reverseWord) 
        => WordCache.Add(word, reverseWord);
}

Initialize the Mock and Class Under Test

Before we jump into the verify, setup and callback features of Moq, we'll use the [TestInitialize] attribute in the MSTest framework to run a method before each test is executed. This method will define a mock of the IUtilLogger interface and initialize the class under test (WordUtils).

private IUtilLogger _log;
private IWordUtils _wordUtils;

[TestInitialize]
public void Initialize()
{
    // Initialize a mock of the logger dependency
    _log = Mock.Of<IUtilLogger>();

    // Initialize the WordUtils class with it's dependency
    _wordUtils = new WordUtils(_log);
}

Using Verify

Now that we've got our mock created, let's write our first unit test to use the verification feature of Moq. Once we've executed the method that we're testing (Reverse), we want to determine if we're actually checking if the log is enabled. To do this we'll "verify" if the 'IsLogEnabled' method on the mock was executed as part of the test. We can also verify how many times the method was executed:

[TestMethod]
public void Reverse_ShouldInvokeOnce_IsLogEnabled()
{
    _wordUtils.Reverse("mountain");

    Mock.Get(_log).Verify(x => x.IsLogEnabled(), Times.Once);
}

Using Setup

We can also verify if the log was actually logged using the 'Log' method, but to do that we'll need to use the "setup" feature. If we simply try and verify if the log was logged the test will fail. This is because the method
'IsLogEnabled' will return false by default. It will only return true if the setting is enabled in appsettings.json, a file that's missing from our unit test project. Instead, let's setup the method 'IsLogEnabled' to simulate a response of true:

[TestMethod]
public void Reverse_ShouldInvokeOnce_LogInformationMethod()
{
    Mock.Get(_log)
        .Setup(x => x.IsLogEnabled())
        .Returns(true);

    _wordUtils.Reverse("mountain");

    Mock.Get(_log).Verify(x => x.Log(
        LogLevel.Information, 
        It.IsAny<EventId>(), 
        It.IsAny<FormattedLogValues>(), 
        It.IsAny<Exception>(), 
        It.IsAny<Func<object, Exception, string>>()), 
        Times.Once);
}

Using Callback

Imagine if you had a method in your application that inserted a new row into a table in a database, and this method was dependant on that new row being inserted for it to carry on its work. If your database was a mock in a unit test, how would you write a test to simulate that the row was inserted? This would be an opportunity to use the "callback" feature of Moq.

In this example I'm instructing the method 'AddToWordCache' to insert it's two parameters (word and reverseWord) into a dictionary object that I'm setting up in my unit test. When the method 'AddToWordCache' is executed as part of the test, I can rely on those two parameters being inserted into the cache so I can continue with the rest of the unit test.

[TestMethod]
public void Reverse_ShouldInvokeOnce_AddToWordCache()
{
    string word = "mountain";
    string reverseWord = "niatnuom";

    Dictionary<string, string> wordCache = new Dictionary<string, string>();

    Mock.Get(_log)
        .Setup(x => x.AddToWordCache(word, reverseWord))
        .Callback<string, string>((w, r) => wordCache.Add(w, r));

    _wordUtils.Reverse(word);

    wordCache.Count.Should().BeGreaterThan(0);

    Mock.Get(_log).Verify(x => x.AddToWordCache(
        It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>()), Times.Once);
}

GitHub Repository

The code in this article is available at
github.com/stevenmclintock/moq-demo-project.