.Net Core Snapshot unit testing - Verify does not serialize Newtonsoft.Json JObject

Question

I try to use Verify to write a snapshot unit test to test a complex object. However, Newtonsoft.Json JObject properties are serialized into an empty array.

Verify version is 19.6.0.

How to make Verify to serialize JObject properly?

Code to validate:

• in the production project

public class TestController : ControllerBase
{
    public async Task<ActionResult> ReturnStubResult()
    {
        return Ok( 
        new {
            Property1 = "value1",
            Property2 = 5,
            Property3 = new JObject()
            {
                ["ChildProperty1"] = "child value 1",
                ["ChildProperty2"] = 2
            }
        });
    }
}

• in the unit test project (reference Verify.Xunit library)

[Fact]
public async Task TestSnapshotSerialization()
{
    var controller = new TestController();

    var actionResult = await controller.ReturnStubResult();

    var okObjectResult = actionResult.Should().BeOfType<OkObjectResult>().Which;

    await Verifier.Verify(okObjectResult.Value);
}

returned JSON:

{
  Property1: value1,
  Property2: 5,
  Property3: {
    ChildProperty1: [],
    ChildProperty2: []
  }
}

Answer 1

The team switched to Argon starting with version 18. This is their version of a hard fork of Newtonsoft.Json which they needed to add custom serialization. To fix the problem now we need to reference a hard fork of Verify.Newtonsoft.Json.

Then we would need to add a configuration line

[ModuleInitializer]
public static void Init() => VerifyNewtonsoftJson.Enable();

The reason behind the serialization problem seems to be that the hard copy of Newtonsoft.Json does not treat Newtonsoft.Json Jobject and Argon JObect to be the same type.

There is a neat answer on a similar problem where an example of custom serializer was written to overcome it.