How can I test if a private method of a class is called or not with rhino mock?

Question

I am quite new at C# and also rhino mocks. I searched and found similar topics with my question but couldnt find a proper solution.

I am trying to understand if the private method is called or not in my unit test. I am using rhino mock, read many files about it, some of them just say that change the access specifier of the method from private to public, but I can not change the source code. I tried to link source file to my test project but it doesnt change.

  public void calculateItems()
    {
        var result = new Result(fileName, ip, localPath, remotePath);

        calculateItems(result, nameOfString);
    }

    private void calculateItems(Result result, string nameOfString )

As you see from the code above, I have two methods have exactly same name, calculateItems, but public one has no parameter, private one has two parameters. I am trying to understand when I called public one in my unittest, is private method called?

    private CalculateClass sut;
    private Result result; 

    [SetUp]
    public void Setup()
    {
      result = MockRepository.GenerateStub<Result>();
      sut = new CalculateClass();
    }

    [TearDown]
    public void TearDown()
    {

    }

    [Test]
    public void test()
    {     
        sut.Stub(stub => stub.calculateItems(Arg<Result>.Is.Anything, Arg<string>.Is.Anything));

        sut.calculateItems();

        sut.AssertWasCalled(stub => stub.calculateItems(Arg<Result>.Is.Anything, Arg<string>.Is.Anything));
    }

In my unittest, I am taking such an error which says "No overload method for calculateItems take two arguments". Is there a way to test it without any changing in source code?

Answer 1

You're testing the wrong thing. Private methods are private. They are of no concern to consuming code, and unit tests are consuming code like any other.

In your tests you test and validate the outward facing functionality of the component. Its inner implementation details aren't relevant to the tests. All the tests care about is whether the invoked operation produces the expected results.

So the question you must ask yourself is... What are the expected results when invoking this operation?:

calculateItems()

It doesn't return anything, so what does it do? What state does it modify in some way? That is what your test needs to observe, not the implementation details but the observable result. (And if the operation has no observable result, then there's no difference between "passed" or "failed" so there's nothing to test.)

We can't see the details of your code, but it's possible that the observable result is coupled to another component entirely. If that's the case then that other component is a dependency for this operation and the goal of the unit test is to mock that dependency so the operation can be tested independently of the dependency. The component may then need to be modified so that a dependency is provided rather than internally controlled. (This is referred to as the Dependency Inversion Principle.)

---

Also of note...

but I can not change the source code

That's a separate problem entirely. If you truly can't change the source code, then the value of these tests is drastically reduced and possibly eliminated entirely. If a test fails, what can you do about it? Nothing. Because you can't change the code. So what are you testing?

Keep in mind that it's not only possible but unfortunately very common for programmers to write code which can't be meaningfully unit tested. If this code was provided to you by someone else and you are forbidden to change it for some non-technical reason, then it will be the responsibility of that someone else to correct the code. "Correcting" may include "making it possible to meaningfully unit test". (Or, honestly, they should be unit testing it. Not you.)