Public fields with Isolater

I think the problem you're having is that you're mixing APIs - you shouldn't try to use both Arrange/Act/Assert and Reflective/Natural mocks in the same test. They're really not meant to go together and it doesn't work out well.

To the best of my knowledge, right now the AAA stuff doesn't support field mocking - it's coming.

In the meantime, here's how you'd do it in Reflective/Natural mocks. Note that I cobbled together a minimal reproduction to illustrate the point - obviously your stuff is more complex than this. If it turns out this sort of solution doesn't work for you, you may need to post a little more in the way of example code to show us how we might be able to better help you.

public class MemberObject
{
  private int roleID;
  
  public MemberObject(int role)
  {
    this.roleID = role;
  }
  
  public int DoSomethingRoleSpecific()
  {
    // This is where the private field is used.
    if(this.roleID >0)
    {
      return 1;
    }
    else if(this.roleID == 0)
    {
      return 0;
    }
    return -1;
  }
}

public class MemberWebService
{
  public MemberObject CreatedMember { get; private set; }
  public void CreateRoleCollection(int role, int b, bool c)
  {
    this.CreatedMember = new MemberObject(role);
  }
}

[TestFixture]
[VerifyMocks]
public class MyTestFixture
{
  [Test]
  public void ReflectiveAndNatural()
  {
    // The next instance of a MemberObject that gets created will have
    // its roleID set to -1.
    Mock<MemberObject> mockMemberObject = MockManager.Mock<MemberObject>();
    mockMemberObject.AssignField("roleID", -1);
    
    // Set up expectations against an actual MemberWebService.
    MemberWebService fakeService = new MemberWebService();
    using(RecordExpectations recorder = RecorderManager.StartRecording())
    {
      fakeService.CreateRoleCollection(1, 1, true);
      recorder.CheckArguments();
      recorder.CallOriginal();
    }
    
    // This would normally make the member object have an internal role ID of 1,
    // which means the role-specific method will return 1. Our fake will
    // cause the role-specific method to return -1.
    fakeService.CreateRoleCollection(1, 1, true);
    Assert.AreEqual(-1, fakeService.CreatedMember.DoSomethingRoleSpecific());
  }
}

Thanks for your reply Travis, I will try to test it out today. But here are my thoughts, and anyone please correct me if I am wrong.

I wanted the use AAA syntax because of RecursiveMocking, this webservice and objects within are so tightly bound to System.Web items, some are public fields, some properties, that I get all sorts of errors like, and this is off the top of my head, but "cannot create this outside asp.net context" when I tried to create objects. And as I thought Natural / Reflective can't do recursive mocking...which is why I avoid those two frameworks with this particular set of legacy code.

I couldn't find the field mocking section of the AAA so I remember reading the part about combining the other two to do things, so I tried it with AAA. And I remember the section about assignField, so I went ahead and tried to make my Typemock salad.

Following is just my misconception but hopefully it illustrates my flawed way of thinking... :oops:

the documents portrayed the various API's as evolutions of features. Started with reflective, moved to natural, moved to AAA. And the documents have a section about combining reflective and natural, and things like the cheat sheets don't have AAA syntax, and other similar things.

So..(with a long drawn-out 'o' sound and a smattering of uncertainty)...I thought that the documents were just not up-to-date and that mixing frameworks of any of the three was ok and that one day there would be docs on it. NOTE: I am aware that this was my assumption and it is most likely wrong, hence probably why I am having so much trouble.

As I understand it now and will try....
AAA doesn't have field level mocking/stubbing. Can't do, use reflective/natural.
Natural/Reflective can't do recursive mocks, have to mock all field level objects by hand.
Safe Mix Natural/Reflective
Don't Mix AAA with the others - Lots of fizzing and bubbling.


Thanks again Travis
GopherCoder

You're right - The documentation should be more explicit on this subject.
We will update Isolator document to include a clarification.

I'd like to mention the fact that we're adding new functionality to the AAA API so hopefully in the neat future you won't need to use Natural/Refelctive mocks.