Mocking HttpClient in unit tests

Question

I have some issues trying to wrap my code to be used in unit tests. The issues is this. I Have the interface IHttpHandler:

public interface IHttpHandler
{
    HttpClient client { get; }
}

And the class using it, HttpHandler:

public class HttpHandler : IHttpHandler
{
    public HttpClient client
    {
        get
        {
            return new HttpClient();
        }
    }
}

And then the Connection class, which uses simpleIOC to inject the client implementation:

public class Connection
{
    private IHttpHandler _httpClient;

    public Connection(IHttpHandler httpClient)
    {
        _httpClient = httpClient;
    }
}

And then I have a unit test project which has this class:

private IHttpHandler _httpClient;

[TestMethod]
public void TestMockConnection()
{
    var client = new Connection(_httpClient);

    client.doSomething();  

    // Here I want to somehow create a mock instance of the http client
    // Instead of the real one. How Should I approach this?     

}

Now obviously I will have methods in the Connection class that will retrieve data (JSON) from a my back end. However, I want to write unit tests for this class, and obviously I don't want to write tests against the real back end, rather a mocked one. I Have tried to google a good answer to this without great success. I can and have used Moq to mock before, but never on something like httpClient. How Should I approach this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

HttpClient's extensibility lies in the HttpMessageHandler passed to the constructor. Its intent is to allow platform specific implementations, but you can also mock it. There's no need to create a decorator wrapper for HttpClient.

If you'd prefer a DSL to using Moq, I have a library up on GitHub/Nuget that makes things a little easier: https://github.com/richardszalay/mockhttp

var mockHttp = new MockHttpMessageHandler();

// Setup a respond for the user api (including a wildcard in the URL)
mockHttp.When("http://localost/api/user/*")
        .Respond("application/json", "{'name' : 'Test McGee'}"); // Respond with JSON

// Inject the handler or client into your application code
var client = new HttpClient(mockHttp);

var response = await client.GetAsync("http://localhost/api/user/1234");
// or without async: var response = client.GetAsync("http://localhost/api/user/1234").Result;

var json = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

// No network connection required
Console.Write(json); // {'name' : 'Test McGee'}