Is Pex and Moles the answer to Sharepoint testing?

I have got round to watching Peli de Halleux’s presentation on testing SharePoint with moles from the SharePoint Connections 2010 event in Amsterdam, very interesting. This brings a whole new set of tools to the testing of Sharepoint. I think it is best to view the subject of this presentation in two parts Pex and Moles, even though they are from the same stable; Moles being produced to enable Pex. But rather than me explaining how it all works just watch the video.

So to my thoughts, the easier bit to consider is Pex. If you can express your unit tests in a parameterised manner then this is a great tool for you. The example that Peli gives of an event handler that parses a string is a good one. We all have loads of places where this type of testing is needed, especially in Sharepoint. The problem here, as he points out, is that you need to use some form of mocking framework to allow the easy execution of these tests for both developers and automated build servers. I would usually use Typemock Isolator to provide this mocking, the problem is that Pex and Isolator at this time can’t run together. The Pex Explorer does not start the Typemock mocking interceptor, and thus far I can’t find a way to get round the problem.

So enters Moles, this is Microsoft Research’s subbing framework that ‘detour any .NET method to user-defined delegates, e.g., replace any call to the SharePoint Object Model by a user-defined delegate’. Now I find the Moles syntax is a bit strange. I suspect it is down to my past experience, but I still find the Typemock Isolator AAA syntax easier to read than Moles’. However, there are some nice wrapper classes provided to make it easier to use the Moles framework with Sharepoint.

So where does this leave us? At this time if you want to use Pex (and I certainly would like to) you have to use Moles (if you need stubbing). But you also have to remember that Pex & Moles are research projects. They are available for commercial evaluation, but at this time there seems to be no plans to productise it or roll it into Visual Studio, this means on effect no support. I don’t see either of these points as being a major barrier, as long as you make the choice to accept them knowingly.

However for ultimate flexibility it would be really nice to see Typemock Isolator being interoperable Pex, thus allowing me to use the new techniques of Pex against legacy tests already written using Isolator.