How to unit test with ILogger in ASP.NET Core

This is my controller:

public class BlogController : Controller
{
    private IDAO<Blog> _blogDAO;
    private readonly ILogger<BlogController> _logger;

    public BlogController(ILogger<BlogController> logger, IDAO<Blog> blogDAO)
    {
        this._blogDAO = blogDAO;
        this._logger = logger;
    }
    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        var blogs = this._blogDAO.GetMany();
        this._logger.LogInformation("Index page say hello", new object[0]);
        return View(blogs);
    }
}

As you can see I have 2 dependencies, a IDAO and a ILogger

And this is my test class, I use xUnit to test and Moq to create mock and stub, I can mock DAO easy, but with the ILogger I don't know what to do so I just pass null and comment out the call to log in controller when run test. Is there a way to test but still keep the logger somehow ?

public class BlogControllerTest
{
    [Fact]
    public void Index_ReturnAViewResult_WithAListOfBlog()
    {
        var mockRepo = new Mock<IDAO<Blog>>();
        mockRepo.Setup(repo => repo.GetMany(null)).Returns(GetListBlog());
        var controller = new BlogController(null,mockRepo.Object);

        var result = controller.Index();

        var viewResult = Assert.IsType<ViewResult>(result);
        var model = Assert.IsAssignableFrom<IEnumerable<Blog>>(viewResult.ViewData.Model);
        Assert.Equal(2, model.Count());
    }
}

Solution 1:

Just mock it as well as any other dependency:

var mock = new Mock<ILogger<BlogController>>();
ILogger<BlogController> logger = mock.Object;

//or use this short equivalent 
logger = Mock.Of<ILogger<BlogController>>()

var controller = new BlogController(logger);

You probably will need to install Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions package to use ILogger<T>.

Moreover you can create a real logger:

var serviceProvider = new ServiceCollection()
    .AddLogging()
    .BuildServiceProvider();

var factory = serviceProvider.GetService<ILoggerFactory>();

var logger = factory.CreateLogger<BlogController>();

Solution 2:

Actually, I've found Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions.NullLogger<> which looks like a perfect solution. Install the package Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions, then follow the example to configure and use it:

using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    ...

    services.AddSingleton<ILoggerFactory, NullLoggerFactory>();

    ...
}

using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

public class MyClass : IMyClass
{
    public const string ErrorMessageILoggerFactoryIsNull = "ILoggerFactory is null";

    private readonly ILogger<MyClass> logger;

    public MyClass(ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
    {
        if (null == loggerFactory)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException(ErrorMessageILoggerFactoryIsNull, (Exception)null);
        }

        this.logger = loggerFactory.CreateLogger<MyClass>();
    }
}

and unit test

//using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
//using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

[TestMethod]
public void SampleTest()
{
    ILoggerFactory doesntDoMuch = new Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions.NullLoggerFactory();
    IMyClass testItem = new MyClass(doesntDoMuch);
    Assert.IsNotNull(testItem);
}