Simplifying Testing through design considerations while utilizing dependency injection

Posted by Adam Driscoll on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Adam Driscoll
Published on 2010-03-23T03:06:47Z Indexed on 2010/03/23 3:11 UTC
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unit-testing

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mocking

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dependency-injection

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design

We are a few months into a green-field project to rework the Logic and Business layers of our product. By utilizing MEF (dependency injection) we have achieved high levels of code coverage and I believe that we have a pretty solid product. As we have been working through some of the more complex logic I have found it increasingly difficult to unit test.

We are utilizing the CompositionContainer to query for types required by these complex algorithms. My unit tests are sometimes difficult to follow due to the lengthy mock object setup process that must take place, just right, to allow for certain circumstances to be verified. My unit tests often take me longer to write than the code that I'm trying to test.

I realize this is not only an issue with dependency injection but with design as a whole. Is poor method design or lack of composition to blame for my overly complex tests? I've tried base classing tests, creating commonly used mock objects and ensuring that I utilize the container as much as possible to ease this issue but my tests always end up quite complex and hard to debug. What are some tips that you've seen to keep such tests concise, readable, and effective?

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