Moq Minute - Recursive Mocks

I love Moq. I think it is the best .NET mocking library. This week I learnt a new feature for simplifying your mock setup: Recursive Mocks.

Needing to have mocks return mocks can be a hassle. Prior to learning about this feature my mocks would looks something like this:

using Moq;

Mock<Bar> bar = new Mock<Bar>();
bar.Setup( x => x.Example() ).Returns( "baz" );

Mock<Foo> foo = new Mock<Foo>();
foo.Setup( x => x.Bar ).Returns( bar.Object );

This feels gross. I needed to setup multiple mocks separately which feels like extra work. It is.

Recursive mocks allow you to setup mocked properties automatically. You can setup methods and properties on any property of a Mock<T> without creating a separate Mock<T>.

Here is the same setup as above using recursive mocks:

using Moq;

Mock<Foo> foo = new Mock<Foo>();
foo.Setup( x => x.Bar.Example() ).Returns( "baz" );

Much simpler. According to the documentation, it can also be used for methods and anywhere else where a value that can be mocked is returned.

I hope you like this Moq feature and try it out soon. Enjoy.

I wanted to share this with my co-workers and decided sharing it here would be an even better way to save keystrokes.