Unit testing ASP.Net MVC Authorize attribute to verify redirect to login page

This is probably going to turn out to be a case of just needing another pair of eyes. I must be missing something, but I cannot figure out why this kind of thing cannot be tested for. I'm basically trying to ensure that unauthenticated users cannot access the view by marking the controller with the [Authorize] attribute and I'm trying to tests this using the following code:

[Fact]
public void ShouldRedirectToLoginForUnauthenticatedUsers()
{
    var mockControllerContext = new Mock<ControllerContext>()
                         { DefaultValue = DefaultValue.Mock };
    var controller = new MyAdminController() 
              {ControllerContext = mockControllerContext.Object};
    mockControllerContext.Setup(c =>
               c.HttpContext.Request.IsAuthenticated).Returns(false);
    var result = controller.Index();
    Assert.IsAssignableFrom<RedirectResult>(result);
}

The RedirectResult I'm looking for is some kind of indication that the user is being redirected to the login form, but instead a ViewResult is always returned and when debugging I can see that the Index() method is successfully hit even though the user is not authenticated.

Am I doing something wrong? Testing at the wrong level? Should I rather be testing at the route level for this kind of thing?

I know that the [Authorize] attribute is working, because when I spin up the page, the login screen is indeed forced upon me - but how do I verify this in a test?

The controller and index method are very simple just so that I can verify the behaviour. I've included them for completeness:

[Authorize]
public class MyAdminController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }
}

Any help appreciated...

You are testing at the wrong level. The [Authorize] attribute ensures that the routing engine will never invoke that method for an unauthorized user - the RedirectResult will actually be coming from the route, not from your controller method.

Good news is - there's already test coverage for this (as part of the MVC framework source code), so I'd say you don't need to worry about it; just make sure your controller method does the right thing when it gets called, and trust the framework not to call it in the wrong circumstances.

EDIT: If you want to verify the presence of the attribute in your unit tests, you'll need to use reflection to inspect your controller methods as follows. This example will verify the presence of the Authorize attribute on the ChangePassword POST method in the 'New ASP.NET MVC 2 Project' demo that's installed with MVC2.

[TestFixture]
public class AccountControllerTests {

	[Test]
	public void Verify_ChangePassword_Method_Is_Decorated_With_Authorize_Attribute() {
		var controller = new AccountController();
		var type = controller.GetType();
		var methodInfo = type.GetMethod("ChangePassword", new Type[] { typeof(ChangePasswordModel) });
		var attributes = methodInfo.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AuthorizeAttribute), true);
		Assert.IsTrue(attributes.Any(), "No AuthorizeAttribute found on ChangePassword(ChangePasswordModel model) method");
	}
}

Well you might be testing at the wrong level but its the test that makes sense. I mean, if I flag a method with the authorize(Roles="Superhero") attribute, I don't really need a test if I flagged it. What I (think I) want is to test that an unauthorized user doesn't have access and that an authorized user does.

For a unauthorized user a test like this:

// Arrange
var user = SetupUser(isAuthenticated, roles);
var controller = SetupController(user);

// Act
SomeHelper.Invoke(controller => controller.MyAction());

// Assert
Assert.AreEqual(401,
  controller.ControllerContext.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode, "Status Code");

Well, it's not easy and it took me 10 hours, but here it is. I hope someone can benefit from it or convince me to go into another profession. :) (BTW - I'm using rhino mock)

[Test]
public void AuthenticatedNotIsUserRole_Should_RedirectToLogin()
{
    // Arrange
    var mocks = new MockRepository();
    var controller = new FriendsController();
    var httpContext = FakeHttpContext(mocks, true);
    controller.ControllerContext = new ControllerContext
    {
        Controller = controller,
        RequestContext = new RequestContext(httpContext, new RouteData())
    };

    httpContext.User.Expect(u => u.IsInRole("User")).Return(false);
    mocks.ReplayAll();

    // Act
    var result =
        controller.ActionInvoker.InvokeAction(controller.ControllerContext, "Index");
    var statusCode = httpContext.Response.StatusCode;

    // Assert
    Assert.IsTrue(result, "Invoker Result");
    Assert.AreEqual(401, statusCode, "Status Code");
    mocks.VerifyAll();
}

Although, thats not very useful without this helper function:

public static HttpContextBase FakeHttpContext(MockRepository mocks, bool isAuthenticated)
{
    var context = mocks.StrictMock<HttpContextBase>();
    var request = mocks.StrictMock<HttpRequestBase>();
    var response = mocks.StrictMock<HttpResponseBase>();
    var session = mocks.StrictMock<HttpSessionStateBase>();
    var server = mocks.StrictMock<HttpServerUtilityBase>();
    var cachePolicy = mocks.Stub<HttpCachePolicyBase>();
    var user = mocks.StrictMock<IPrincipal>();
    var identity = mocks.StrictMock<IIdentity>();
    var itemDictionary = new Dictionary<object, object>();

    identity.Expect(id => id.IsAuthenticated).Return(isAuthenticated);
    user.Expect(u => u.Identity).Return(identity).Repeat.Any();
    
    context.Expect(c => c.User).PropertyBehavior();
    context.User = user;
    context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Items).Return(itemDictionary).Repeat.Any();
    context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Request).Return(request).Repeat.Any();
    context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Response).Return(response).Repeat.Any();
    context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Session).Return(session).Repeat.Any();
    context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Server).Return(server).Repeat.Any();
    
    response.Expect(r => r.Cache).Return(cachePolicy).Repeat.Any();
    response.Expect(r => r.StatusCode).PropertyBehavior();

    return context;
}

So that gets you confirmation that users not in a role don't have access. I tried writing a test to confirm the opposite, but after two more hours of digging through mvc plumbing I will leave it to manual testers. (I bailed when I got to the VirtualPathProviderViewEngine class. WTF? I don't want anything to do a VirtualPath or a Provider or ViewEngine much the union of the three!)

I am curious as to why this is so hard in an allegedly "testable" framework.

Why not just use reflection to look for the [Authorize] attribute on the controller class and / or the action method you are testing? Assuming the framework does make sure the Attribute is honored, this would be the easiest thing to do.

I don't agree with Dylan's answer, because 'user must be logged in' does not imply that 'controller method is annotated with AuthorizeAttribute'

to ensure 'user must be logged in' when you call the action method, the ASP.NET MVC framework does something like this (just hold on, it will get simpler eventually)

let $filters = All associated filter attributes which implement
               IAuthorizationFilter

let $invoker = instance of type ControllerActionInvoker
let $ctrlCtx = instance or mock of type ControllerContext
let $actionDesc = instance or mock of type ActionDescriptor
let $authzCtx = $invoker.InvokeAuthorizationFilters($ctrlCtx, $filters, $actionDesc);

then controller action is authorized when $authzCtx.Result is not null 

It is hard to implement this pseudo script in a working c# code. Likely, Xania.AspNet.Simulator makes it really simple to setup a test like this and performs exactly these step under the cover. here is an example.

first install the package from nuget (version 1.4.0-beta4 at the time of writing) > PM > install-package Xania.AspNet.Simulator -Pre

Then your test method could look like this (assuming NUnit and FluentAssertions are installed):

[Test]
public void AnonymousUserIsNotAuthorized()
{
  // arrange
  var action = new ProfileController().Action(c => c.Index());
  // act
  var result = action.GetAuthorizationResult();
  // assert
  result.Should().NotBeNull(); 
}

[Test]
public void LoggedInUserIsAuthorized()
{
  // arrange
  var action = new ProfileController().Action(c => c.Index())
     // simulate authenticated user
     .Authenticate("user1", new []{"role1"});
  // act
  var result = action.GetAuthorizationResult();
  // assert
  result.Should().BeNull(); 
}

For .NET Framework we use this class to verify that every MVC and API Controller have AuthorizeAttribute and that every API Controller should have a RoutePrefixAttribute.

[TestFixture]
public class TestControllerHasAuthorizeRole
{
    private static IEnumerable<Type> GetChildTypes<T>()
    {
        var types = typeof(Startup).Assembly.GetTypes();
        return types.Where(t => t.IsSubclassOf(typeof(T)) && !t.IsAbstract);
    }

    [Test]
    public void MvcControllersShouldHaveAuthrorizeAttribute()
    {
        var controllers = GetChildTypes<Controller>();
        foreach (var controller in controllers)
        {
            var authorizeAttribute = Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(controller, typeof(System.Web.Mvc.AuthorizeAttribute), true) as System.Web.Mvc.AuthorizeAttribute;
            Assert.IsNotNull(authorizeAttribute, $"MVC-controller {controller.FullName} does not implement AuthorizeAttribute");
        }
    }

    [Test]
    public void ApiControllersShouldHaveAuthorizeAttribute()
    {
        var controllers = GetChildTypes<ApiController>();
        foreach (var controller in controllers)
        {
            var attribute = Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(controller, typeof(System.Web.Http.AuthorizeAttribute), true) as System.Web.Http.AuthorizeAttribute;
            Assert.IsNotNull(attribute, $"API-controller {controller.FullName} does not implement AuthorizeAttribute");
        }
    }

    [Test]
    public void ApiControllersShouldHaveRoutePrefixAttribute()
    {
        var controllers = GetChildTypes<ApiController>();
        foreach (var controller in controllers)
        {
            var attribute = Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(controller, typeof(System.Web.Http.RoutePrefixAttribute), true) as System.Web.Http.RoutePrefixAttribute;
            Assert.IsNotNull(attribute, $"API-controller {controller.FullName} does not implement RoutePrefixAttribute");
            Assert.IsTrue(attribute.Prefix.StartsWith("api/", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase), $"API-controller {controller.FullName} does not have a route prefix that starts with api/");
        }
    }
}

It is a bit easier in .NET Core and .NET 5<. Here a MVC Controller inherits from Controller that in turn inherits from ControllerBase. An Api Controller inherits directly from ControllerBase and therefore we can test MVC and API Controllers using a single method:

public class AuthorizeAttributeTest
{
    private static IEnumerable<Type> GetChildTypes<T>()
    {
        var types = typeof(Startup).Assembly.GetTypes();
        return types.Where(t => t.IsSubclassOf(typeof(T)) && !t.IsAbstract);
    }

    [Fact]
    public void ApiAndMVCControllersShouldHaveAuthorizeAttribute()
    {
        var controllers = GetChildTypes<ControllerBase>();
        foreach (var controller in controllers)
        {
            var attribute = Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(controller, typeof(Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authorization.AuthorizeAttribute), true) as Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authorization.AuthorizeAttribute;
            Assert.NotNull(attribute);
        }
    }
}