[Nmock-general] remotable mocks

[Owen R. <OR...@th...>]

as i've been doing a bunch of work lately with remoting, i wanted a way to
test my remotable interfaces and the code that called them.  to facilitate
this, i've augmented nmock to serve remotable mocks.  this basically
entails two things:
1) generating dynamic mocks that extend MarshalByRef so that they can be
serialised and proxy'ed.
2) providing a simple server to host the mocks

here's a sample test to show you how it works:

            [Test]
            public void MarshalRemotingMock()
            {
                  RemotingMock mock = new RemotingMock(typeof(Foo));
                  mock.Expect("Bar");

                  TcpChannel channel = new TcpChannel(1234);
                  using (MockServer server = new
MockServer(mock.MarshalByRefInstance, channel, "mock.rem"))
                  {
                        Foo foo =
(Foo)RemotingServices.Connect(typeof(Foo),
"tcp://localhost:1234/mock.rem");
                        foo.Bar();
                  }

                  mock.Verify();
            }

            interface Foo
            {
                  void Bar();
            }

- as you can see, #1 is accomplished by creating a new instance of
RemotingMock and passing in the type to mock (done in a similar fashion to
working with DynamicMock).
- for #2, create an instance of a MockServer (in a using block).  the mock
server will install your remotable mock on the specified channel and uri.
- next, you can retrieve a proxy of your mock using RemotingServices and
invoke methods on it to your mocking-hearts' content.
simple, yet very powerful IMO!

here's another example from the CC.NET source:

      [Test]
            public void SendScheduleToCruiseManager()
            {
                  CollectingConstraint projectNameConstraint = new
CollectingConstraint();
                  CollectingConstraint scheduleConstraint = new
CollectingConstraint();
                  RemotingMock cc = new RemotingMock(typeof
(ICruiseManager));
                  cc.Expect("Run", projectNameConstraint,
scheduleConstraint);

                  TcpChannel channel = new TcpChannel(2334);
                  using (MockServer server = new
MockServer(cc.MarshalByRefInstance, channel, "MockCruise.rem"))
                  {
                        Runner runner = new Runner();
                        runner.Url = "tcp://localhost:2334/MockCruise.rem";
                        runner.Run("myProject");
                  }

                  AssertEquals("myProject",
projectNameConstraint.Parameter);
                  AssertEquals(new Schedule(),
scheduleConstraint.Parameter);
                  cc.Verify();
            }

thoughts?  comments?
cheers,
owen.

---
R. Owen Rogers
ThoughtWorks Ltd

ThoughtWorks - Deliver with passion!