Introduction

You’re writing a Web API with ASP.NET Core 2.1, and use EF Core as your ORM.
If you follow the official guidance on doing integration tests in ASP.NET Core 2.1, then you can use either an in-memory database provider, or SQLite in-memory. We are using an in-memory database provider, which is setup in our CustomWebApplicationFactory as per the current Microsoft guidelines which are these:

public class CustomWebApplicationFactory<TStartup> 
    : WebApplicationFactory<RazorPagesProject.Startup>
{
    protected override void ConfigureWebHost(IWebHostBuilder builder)
    {
        builder.ConfigureServices(services =>
        {
            // Create a new service provider.
            var serviceProvider = new ServiceCollection()
                .AddEntityFrameworkInMemoryDatabase()
                .BuildServiceProvider();

            // Add a database context (ApplicationDbContext) using an in-memory 
            // database for testing.
            services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options => 
            {
                options.UseInMemoryDatabase("InMemoryDbForTesting");
                options.UseInternalServiceProvider(serviceProvider);
            });

These work well when running integration tests, as it allows you to quickly setup a database for each test, independent of every other test.

The problem

I couldn’t find any guidance on how to verify the data gets written correctly to the database in an assertion. e.g. here is one of our tests. We are using the XBehave library:

[Scenario]
public void CreateApplication_ShouldReturn201()
{
    "Given a valid create application request"
      .x(() => _fixture.GivenAValidCreateApplicationRequest());
    "When an application is created"
      .x(() => _fixture.WhenAnApplicationIsCreated());
    "Then the response http status code is a 201"
      .x(() => _fixture.ThenTheResponseStatusCodeIs(HttpStatusCode.Created));
    "And the response should contain an id"
      .x(() => _fixture.ThenTheResponseShouldContainAnApplicationId());
    "And the database should contain the application"
      .x(() => _fixture.ThenTheDatabaseShouldContainTheApplication());
}

How to verify the final step – “ThenTheDatabaseShouldContainTheApplication”?

The solution

Firstly, you need to change the call to AddDbContext so that your DbContext is a Singleton (the default is Scoped).

services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options => 
{
    options.UseInMemoryDatabase("InMemoryDbForTesting");
    options.UseInternalServiceProvider(serviceProvider);
}, ServiceLifetime.Singleton);

Then, you can get a DbContext from the system under test by asking its service collection for one, with a helper property like so:

protected ApplicationDbContext DbContext
{
    get => TestServer.Host.Services.GetService(typeof(ApplicationDbContext)) as ApplicationDbContext;
}

Since the DbContext is a singleton it’ll be the same one the system under test used, so we can query the DbContext for it directly.

internal void ThenTheDatabaseShouldContainTheApplication()
{
    var application = DbContext.Applications.Find(ApplicationId);
    Assert.NotNull(application);
}