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PO(Deep) comparison of an object to a reference in unit tests (C#)
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copied!<p>In a Unit Test (in Visual Studio 2008) I want to compare the content of a large object (a list of custom types, to be precise) with a stored reference of this object. The goal is to make sure, that any later refactorings of the code produces the same object content.</p> <p><em>Discarded Idea: A first thought was to serialize to XML, and then compare the hardcoded strings or a file content. This would allow for easy finding of any difference. However since my types are not XML serializable without a hack, I must find another solution. I could use binary serialization but this will not be readable anymore.</em></p> <p><strong>Is there a simple and elegant solution to this?</strong> <br><br><strong>EDIT:</strong> According to Marc Gravell's proposal I do now like this:</p> <pre><code>using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream()) { //create actual graph using only comparable properties List<NavigationResult> comparableActual = (from item in sparsed select new NavigationResult { Direction = item.Direction, /*...*/ VersionIndication = item.VersionIndication }).ToList(); (new BinaryFormatter()).Serialize(stream, comparableActual); string base64encodedActual = System.Convert.ToBase64String(stream.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)stream.Length);//base64 encoded binary representation of this string base64encodedReference = @"AAEAAAD....";//this reference is the expected value Assert.AreEqual(base64encodedReference, base64encodedActual, "The comparable part of the sparsed set is not equal to the reference."); } </code></pre> <p>In essence I do select the comparable properties first, then encode the graph, then compare it to a similarly encoded reference. Encoding enables deep comparison in a simple way. The reason I use base64 encoding is, that I can easily store the reference it in a string variable.</p>

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