I’m using NSubstitute in a new TDD project for a component. Normally I prefer to program in C# but the company I’m currently working for is a VB-Shop, so I have to use VB here. (Note: I’m using VS 2008 atm)

NSubstitute is a mocking framework which makes heavy use of Lambdas. This results in compact and very readable Tests.

Here is an example where I want to throw an exception when a specific method on a mock is called (C# version). Given this interface:

In the test we expect that the Bar() method should throw an ApplicationException.

First we create a Substitute (a mock) aSub. By using the Returns() – extension method which comes with NSubstitute, it is possible to define what should be returned by a given method. Here I just define that calling Bar() throws the expected ApplicationMethod.

Calling Bar() throws and our test turns green.

Now turning to the dark side VB side:

The first thing to notice here is how the VB spoils the nice syntax by the Of Keyword for generics. “Substitute For Of IFoo” is just not as nice as  “Substitute For IFoo”.

But let’s focus on the main part I want to discuss. To satisfy the tests expectations we cannot just use a nice lambda as in C# because throw new ApplicationException just returns nothing, which is not allowed in VB. The workaround is to use a delegate. So let’s point to (AddressOf) our ThrowExForStringFunction.

To define this function you have to figure out which signature you have to use. This is not as easy as I thought and ReSharper won’t generate the correct signature for you. Studying the NSubstitute sources and the compiler errors is the way to go. Sadly.

In contrast to the C# example we have to deal with internal details to generate the matching method signature just to throw an exception.

To be fair the method could be generalized by using generics:

And the generic method:

Summary: It’s not only NSubstitute which looses the concise syntax. It’s all over the place when using Lambdas in VB.net!  I hope Visual Studio 2010 brings some improvements to the language.