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I'm learning ASP.Net MVC and I've read that it is easy to unit test as controllers can be instantiated and have their methods called without needing to deploy to a web server, and that it is easy to mock dependent objects etc. (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg416511(VS.98).aspx and multiple other references).

It's also possible to run acceptance level tests on the MVC App through the browser using Selenium or Waitin using your own favourite framework to author and control the tests.

What I'd like to know is if it's possible to run ATDD tests at an acceptance test level by calling the controller methods in a deployed, running MVC application, e.g. from Specflow, rather than having to test through the UI?

Or more generally, is it possible to programatically call the API of the ASP.Net MVC application from a test?

It seems like there is a gap in what it is possible to test between unit testing and browser based UI testing. Has anyone been able to bridge that gap?

Dave00Galloway
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Your question isn't clear but if you are asking what I think you are:

MVC controllers (generally) obey REST.

You can call any action on a controller (via a web server like IIS) by sending it a HTTP request. It will return a HTTP response containing the relevant data and data type(HTML, json, XML, etc.). So yes you can programatically call a controller like an API (if by API you mean something you send HTTP requests to and get HTTP responses from) therefore yes you can test the controller without using the UI.

Liam
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  • So use something like WebClient (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/system.net.webclient.aspx / http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7688350/c-sharp-how-to-make-a-http-call) and take advantage of the logical url structure to indirectly call the controller? – Dave00Galloway Jun 17 '14 at 11:09
  • You can use anything you want to generate the HTTP; Fiddler, WebClient, JQuery. [Soap UI](http://www.soapui.org/) has a good built in HTTP testing suite. We use this for load testing our sites. There is a free and a paid for version. – Liam Jun 17 '14 at 12:01