Event Based Async Pattern Unit Testing

[Rich Denis]

Hello,

I am in need of assistance trying to figure out how to 'Unit Test' my Event
Based Async Pattern (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/e7a34yad.aspx) web service
calls. Specifically how to test the event handler.

So as I see it, the auto generated web service proxy will create the custom
event arg class that is passed to the event handler. That is all in good,
the problem is that the custom event arg class is not publicly creatable. So
I can't create a mock object nor can I create an instance of it to populate
myself.

So there is no way that I can without hacking apart the reference.cs file
(which gets re-gened often enough to be a problem) and making the event arg
class publicly creatable.

Can MS provde any ideas on how I could unit test this? I tried creating a
'private accessor' and it gen'd correctly but I can't create an instance of
the accessor without having an instance of the eventarg class.

Thanks for any help in advance.
--
Rich

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Rich,

Welcome to the MSDN newsgroup.

Regarding on the Unit Test with .NET autogenerated proxy class, based on my
understanding, since the "internal" accessor flag is generated by default,
so currently the simplest means to resolve the problem is customizing the
generate class's source(add a public constructor...) . And if you're
worrying about the autogenerated class files are changed frequently, I
think you can consider take advantage of the partial class feature in .NET
2.0, as we can find those generated classes for webservice proxy are all
marked as partial, then we can create a separate source file associated
with that certain class(in your case it's the custom EventArgs class), then
we can add a public constructor or any other method as we like there...)
and this separate source file will not be changed if we updated webservice
proxy. This can work as long as the webservice's name doesn't change :)

In addition, in .net ,we can also use .NET reflection to create class
instance, so I think this is also one possible approach for creating
non-public classes' instances.

Regards,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

[Rich Denis]

Steven,

Once again, you have managed to point out a solution that I had not
considered. I had not found a good use for Partial classes yet other than
what the IDE does for me automatically.

Your solution of creating a partial class worked like a charm. I was able
to create a partial class and then pass it to my event handler unit test. I
even updated the web ref just to make sure it would continue to work.

As a side note, I had already gone down the road of using reflection to
create the event arg class with sucess, but in the end I found the partial
class implementation easier.
Thanks again!
--
Rich
"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" wrote:

Hi Rich,

Welcome to the MSDN newsgroup.

Regarding on the Unit Test with .NET autogenerated proxy class, based on my
understanding, since the "internal" accessor flag is generated by default,
so currently the simplest means to resolve the problem is customizing the
generate class's source(add a public constructor...) . And if you're
worrying about the autogenerated class files are changed frequently, I
think you can consider take advantage of the partial class feature in .NET
2.0, as we can find those generated classes for webservice proxy are all
marked as partial, then we can create a separate source file associated
with that certain class(in your case it's the custom EventArgs class), then
we can add a public constructor or any other method as we like there...)
and this separate source file will not be changed if we updated webservice
proxy. This can work as long as the webservice's name doesn't change :)

In addition, in .net ,we can also use .NET reflection to create class
instance, so I think this is also one possible approach for creating
non-public classes' instances.

Regards,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for your followup Rich,

Glad that my suggestion is of assistance. Please feel free to post here
when there is anything we can help.

Regards,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)