Introduction to Mocking
Explore how to use mocking in xUnit to simulate external dependencies during unit testing. Understand how to create, set up, and inject mocked objects to isolate functionality and verify behaviors, ensuring your .NET code is testable without relying on external services.
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In automated testing, mocking refers to creating fake or simulated objects and behaviors to isolate and test a software application’s specific components or functionalities. Mocking is commonly used in unit testing to ensure that individual units of code—including functions, methods, and classes—behave as expected, even if they rely on external dependencies, such as databases, APIs, or services.
For example, we may have a dependency in a class we test that normally calls an external service via the network. This cannot be executed in unit testing because we don’t test connections with external services. Therefore, instead of using a real implementation of the dependency that makes the network call, we would create a fake ...