How do I test Prism event aggregator subscriptions, on the UIThread?

Question

I have a class, that subscribes to an event via PRISMs event aggregator.

As it is somewhat hard to mock the event aggregator as noted here, I just instantiate a real one and pass it to the system under test.

In my test I then publish the event via that aggregator and then check how my system under test reacts to it. Since the event will be raised by a FileSystemWatcher during production, I want to make use of the automatic dispatch by subscribing on the UIThread, so I can update my UI once the event is raised.

The problem is, that during the test, the event never gets noticed in the system under test unless I don't subscribe on the UIThread.

I am using MSpec for my tests, which I run from inside VS2008 via TDD.Net. Adding [RequiresSta] to my test class didn't help

Does anyone have a solution, that saves me from changing the ThreadOption during my tests (e.g. via a property - what an ugly hack)???

Answer 1

I really think you should use mocks for everything and not the EventAggregator. It's not hard to mock at all... I don't think the linked answer proves much of anything about the testability of the EventAggregator.

Here's your test. I don't use MSpec, but here's the test in Moq. You didn't provide any code, so I'm basing it on the linked-to code. Your scenario is a little harder than the linked scenario because the other OP just wanted to know how to verify that Subscribe was being called, but you actually want to call the method that was passed in the subscribe... something more difficult, but not very.

//Arrange!
Mock<IEventAggregator> eventAggregatorMock = new Mock<IEventAggregator>();
Mock<PlantTreeNodeSelectedEvent> eventBeingListenedTo = new Mock<PlantTreeNodeSelectedEvent>();

Action<int> theActionPassed = null;
//When the Subscribe method is called, we are taking the passed in value
//And saving it to the local variable theActionPassed so we can call it.
eventBeingListenedTo.Setup(theEvent => theEvent.Subscribe(It.IsAny<Action<int>>()))
                    .Callback<Action<int>>(action => theActionPassed = action);

eventAggregatorMock.Setup(e => e.GetEvent<PlantTreeNodeSelectedEvent>())
                   .Returns(eventBeingListenedTo.Object);

//Initialize the controller to be tested.
PlantTreeController controllerToTest = new PlantTreeController(eventAggregatorMock.Object);

//Act!
theActionPassed(3);

//Assert!
Assert.IsTrue(controllerToTest.MyValue == 3);