I'm not convinced by many of the answers.
First of all, imagine you want to unit test a method that uses HttpClient. You should not instantiate HttpClient directly in your implementation. You should inject a factory with the responsibility of providing an instance of HttpClient for you. That way you can mock later on that factory and return whichever HttpClient you want (e.g: a mock HttpClient and not the real one).
So, you would have a factory like the following:
public interface IHttpClientFactory
{
HttpClient Create();
}
And an implementation:
public class HttpClientFactory
: IHttpClientFactory
{
public HttpClient Create()
{
var httpClient = new HttpClient();
return httpClient;
}
}
Of course you would need to register in your IoC Container this implementation. If you use Autofac it would be something like:
builder
.RegisterType<IHttpClientFactory>()
.As<HttpClientFactory>()
.SingleInstance();
Now you would have a proper and testeable implementation. Imagine that your method is something like:
public class MyHttpClient
: IMyHttpClient
{
private readonly IHttpClientFactory _httpClientFactory;
public SalesOrderHttpClient(IHttpClientFactory httpClientFactory)
{
_httpClientFactory = httpClientFactory;
}
public async Task<string> PostAsync(Uri uri, string content)
{
using (var client = _httpClientFactory.Create())
{
var clientAddress = uri.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Authority);
client.BaseAddress = new Uri(clientAddress);
var content = new StringContent(content, Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
var uriAbsolutePath = uri.AbsolutePath;
var response = await client.PostAsync(uriAbsolutePath, content);
var responseJson = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
return responseJson;
}
}
}
Now the testing part. HttpClient extends HttpMessageHandler, which is abstract. Let's create a "mock" of HttpMessageHandler that accepts a delegate so that when we use the mock we can also setup each behaviour for each test.
public class MockHttpMessageHandler
: HttpMessageHandler
{
private readonly Func<HttpRequestMessage, CancellationToken, Task<HttpResponseMessage>> _sendAsyncFunc;
public MockHttpMessageHandler(Func<HttpRequestMessage, CancellationToken, Task<HttpResponseMessage>> sendAsyncFunc)
{
_sendAsyncFunc = sendAsyncFunc;
}
protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
return await _sendAsyncFunc.Invoke(request, cancellationToken);
}
}
And now, and with the help of Moq (and FluentAssertions, a library that makes unit tests more readable), we have everything needed to unit test our method PostAsync that uses HttpClient
public static class PostAsyncTests
{
public class Given_A_Uri_And_A_JsonMessage_When_Posting_Async
: Given_WhenAsync_Then_Test
{
private SalesOrderHttpClient _sut;
private Uri _uri;
private string _content;
private string _expectedResult;
private string _result;
protected override void Given()
{
_uri = new Uri("http://test.com/api/resources");
_content = "{\"foo\": \"bar\"}";
_expectedResult = "{\"result\": \"ok\"}";
var httpClientFactoryMock = new Mock<IHttpClientFactory>();
var messageHandlerMock =
new MockHttpMessageHandler((request, cancellation) =>
{
var responseMessage =
new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Created)
{
Content = new StringContent("{\"result\": \"ok\"}")
};
var result = Task.FromResult(responseMessage);
return result;
});
var httpClient = new HttpClient(messageHandlerMock);
httpClientFactoryMock
.Setup(x => x.Create())
.Returns(httpClient);
var httpClientFactory = httpClientFactoryMock.Object;
_sut = new SalesOrderHttpClient(httpClientFactory);
}
protected override async Task WhenAsync()
{
_result = await _sut.PostAsync(_uri, _content);
}
[Fact]
public void Then_It_Should_Return_A_Valid_JsonMessage()
{
_result.Should().BeEquivalentTo(_expectedResult);
}
}
}
Obviously this test is silly, and we're really testing our mock. But you get the idea. You should test meaningful logic depending on your implementation such as..
- if the code status of the response is not 201, should it throw an exception?
- if the response text cannot be parsed, what should happen?
- etc.
The purpose of this answer was to test something that uses HttpClient and this is a nice clean way to do so.
UPDATE
Lately I use an http builder in my tests where I can easily inject the json response I expect.
public class HttpClientBuilder
{
private HttpMessageHandler _httpMessageHandler = new HttpClientHandler();
public HttpClientBuilder WithJsonResponse(HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode, string json, string contentType = "application/json")
{
var mockHttpMessageHandler =
new MockHttpMessageHandler(
(request, cancellation) =>
{
var responseMessage =
new HttpResponseMessage(httpStatusCode)
{
Content = new StringContent(json, Encoding.UTF8, contentType)
};
var result = Task.FromResult(responseMessage);
return result;
});
_httpMessageHandler = mockHttpMessageHandler;
return this;
}
public HttpClient Build()
{
var httpClient = new HttpClient(_httpMessageHandler);
return httpClient;
}
}
class MockHttpMessageHandler
: HttpMessageHandler
{
private readonly Func<HttpRequestMessage, CancellationToken, Task<HttpResponseMessage>> _sendAsyncFunc;
public MockHttpMessageHandler(Func<HttpRequestMessage, CancellationToken, Task<HttpResponseMessage>> sendAsyncFunc)
{
_sendAsyncFunc = sendAsyncFunc;
}
protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
return await _sendAsyncFunc.Invoke(request, cancellationToken);
}
}
so, as long as I have the HttpClient behind an abstraction like IHttpClientFactory, as I've suggested above, in my tests I can do something like
var httpClientFactoryMock = new Mock<IHttpClientFactory>();
var jsonResponse = "{\"hello world\"}";
var httpClient =
new HttpClientBuilder()
.WithJsonResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, jsonResponse)
.Build();
httpClientFactoryMock
.Setup(x => x.Create())
.Returns(httpClient);
var httpClientFactory = httpClientFactoryMock.Object;
and then use that httpClientFactory.
HttpClientin your interface is where the problem is. You are forcing your client to use theHttpClientconcrete class. Instead, you should expose an abstraction of theHttpClient. – Sandon