Asserting JsonResult Containing Anonymous Type

Question

I was trying to unit test a method in one of my Controllers returning a JsonResult. To my surprise the following code didn\'t work:

[HttpPost]
public JsonResult          


        

Answer 1

Having read the responses here and then looking further afield I found a 2009 msdn blog post with a different approach again. But.. in the comments was a very simple and very elegant solution by Kieran ... to use .ToString().

In your original case:

[HttpPost]
public JsonResult Test()
{
    return Json(new {Id = 123});
}

You could test by doing:

var jsonResult = controller.Test();
Assert.AreEqual("{Id = 123}", jsonResult.Data.ToString());

I much prefer this solution as it:

• avoids changing the original code (InternalsVisibleTo, ExpandoObject),
• avoids using MvcContrib and RhinoMocks (no issue with either of these but why add just to be able to test JsonResult?), and,
• avoids using Reflection (adds complexity to the tests).