Compare equality between two objects in NUnit

Question

I'm trying to assert that one object is "equal" to another object.

The objects are just instances of a class with a bunch of public properties. Is there an easy way to have NUnit assert equality based on the properties?

This is my current solution but I think there may be something better:

Assert.AreEqual(LeftObject.Property1, RightObject.Property1)
Assert.AreEqual(LeftObject.Property2, RightObject.Property2)
Assert.AreEqual(LeftObject.Property3, RightObject.Property3)
...
Assert.AreEqual(LeftObject.PropertyN, RightObject.PropertyN)

What I'm going for would be in the same spirit as the CollectionEquivalentConstraint wherein NUnit verifies that the contents of two collections are identical.

Answer 1

If you can't override Equals for any reason, you can build a helper method that iterates through public properties by reflection and assert each property. Something like this:

public static class AssertEx
{
    public static void PropertyValuesAreEquals(object actual, object expected)
    {
        PropertyInfo[] properties = expected.GetType().GetProperties();
        foreach (PropertyInfo property in properties)
        {
            object expectedValue = property.GetValue(expected, null);
            object actualValue = property.GetValue(actual, null);

            if (actualValue is IList)
                AssertListsAreEquals(property, (IList)actualValue, (IList)expectedValue);
            else if (!Equals(expectedValue, actualValue))
                Assert.Fail("Property {0}.{1} does not match. Expected: {2} but was: {3}", property.DeclaringType.Name, property.Name, expectedValue, actualValue);
        }
    }

    private static void AssertListsAreEquals(PropertyInfo property, IList actualList, IList expectedList)
    {
        if (actualList.Count != expectedList.Count)
            Assert.Fail("Property {0}.{1} does not match. Expected IList containing {2} elements but was IList containing {3} elements", property.PropertyType.Name, property.Name, expectedList.Count, actualList.Count);

        for (int i = 0; i < actualList.Count; i++)
            if (!Equals(actualList[i], expectedList[i]))
                Assert.Fail("Property {0}.{1} does not match. Expected IList with element {1} equals to {2} but was IList with element {1} equals to {3}", property.PropertyType.Name, property.Name, expectedList[i], actualList[i]);
    }
}