Unit Testing WCF Service is launching

Question

I'm new to WCF. I've created a basic service and engineer tested it with the debugger and WCFTestClient. I've never written my own WCF client. Now I need to build unit tests for the service.

My classes:

IXService
CXService
CServiceLauncher

(Yes, I know the C prefix does not meet current standards, but it is required by my client's standards.)

My service functionality can be tested directly against XService, but I need to test CServiceLauncher as well. All I want to do is connect to a URI and discover if there is a service running there and what methods it offers.

Other questions I read:

AddressAccessDeniedException "Your process does not have access rights to this namespace" when Unit testing WCF service - starts service host in unit test
WCF Unit Test - recommends hosting the service in unit test, makes a vague reference to connecting to service via HTTP
WCF MSMQ Unit testing - references MSMQ, which is more detailed than I need
Unit test WCF method - I never knew I could auto generate tests, but the system isn't smart enough to know what to assert.

Test outline:

    public void StartUiTest()
    {
        Uri baseAddress = new Uri("http://localhost:8080/MyService");
        string soapAddress = "soap";
        IUserInterface target = new CServiceLauncher(baseAddress, soapAddress);
        try
        {
            Assert.AreEqual(true, target.StartUi());
            /// @todo Assert.IsTrue(serviceIsRunning);
            /// @todo Assert.IsTrue(service.ExposedMethods.Count() > 4);
            Assert.Inconclusive("This tells us nothing about the service");
        }
        finally
        {
            target.StopUi();
        }
    }

Well, without re-factoring the code to allow injection of the service implementation object into the ServiceLauncher, how would you suggest converting it to a unit test? — Denise Skidmore, May 09 '13 at 19:45
To test `CServiceLauncher` I would mock a service and verify that say a `Start` method was called. If it takes more than 10-15 lines per test, I would stop and rethink how can mock the thing to allow me to write a test in 10-15 lines. — oleksii, May 09 '13 at 20:10
Even if we inject a mock service into CServiceLauncher, we still are in the position of needing to see if the injected service was launched. — Denise Skidmore, May 09 '13 at 20:19

Denise Skidmore · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-09T21:15:56.290

1

I just needed to build a simple client.

Reference: http://webbeyond.blogspot.com/2012/11/wcf-simple-wcf-client-example.html

Add Service Reference to test project
Add to test file:

using System.ServiceModel;

using MyTests.ServiceReferenceNamespace;

Code inside try is now:

            Assert.AreEqual(true, target.StartUi());
            XServiceClient client = new XServiceClient();
            client.GetSessionID();
            Assert.AreEqual(CommunicationState.Opened, client.State, "Wrong communication state after first call");

edited May 09 '13 at 21:15

answered May 09 '13 at 20:59

Denise Skidmore

2,286
22
51

FYI, the first State test does not test that the service was started. If the service was not started I get an exception when I call client.GetSessionID(). `client.Endpoint.Contract.Operations.Count` fulfills my earlier suggestion of getting `service.ExposedMethods.Count()` but also works fine even if the service is not running. I'll still accept other answers if someone can suggest a better way than exceptions to detect if the service is running. – Denise Skidmore May 09 '13 at 21:12
client.Open(); opens the connection whether the service is running or not. No exceptions, no failure when asserting client.State. – Denise Skidmore May 09 '13 at 21:19

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 09 '13 at 19:56

It's not a real answer so please take it easy.

I have been trying to do similar things and what I have learnt that integration testing is difficult. It is difficult because there are many hidden tasks that you need to do, such as:

Make sure you can run the tests regularly
Make sure integration tests can run on the test environment
Maintain different config files, as your environment will be different from the test one
Configure the thing that would automate running of integration tests (CI)
Pray there will be no changes to the paths, test environment, config, hosting platforms etc
Fight security permissions, as usually test thing is not able to host WCF services without admin permissions
Maintain your test harness

To me, this was huge headache and little gain. Don't get me wrong, integration testing is a positive thing, it just requires a lot of time to develop and support.

What have I learnt? Is that do not bother with integration testing of WCF services. Instead I write a lot of unit-tests, to test the contract, state and behaviour. By covering those, I can become sure in a quality of software. And I fight integration of WCF during deployment. This is usually a single battle to configure environment or VM and then next time, deployment goes nice and smooth in an (semi-)automated manner.

Most people would also automate deployment with Chef and alike, those tools can fully configure environment and deploy WCF service.

Unit Testing WCF Service is launching

2 Answers2