Mocking controller context and route data for Web API controller (OAuth attribute)

ASP.NET Web API 2 is a great technology for creating RESTful web services.

However, there can be a challenge for unit testing if you need to mock the OAuth "Authorize" attribute on a controller's method.

This is where Moq comes in.  It's available here - https://github.com/Moq/moq4 .

So, say if you have a controller method that uses the OAuth "Authorization" attribute and it needs unit test coverage then you can use Moq to setup your test.

Example psuedocode for controller method:

[OAuthAuthorization]
public CustomData GetCoolData()
{
    // get data from route here
    // more business logic
    return CustomData object;
}

--------------

Example helper for setting up controller context and route data:
public HttpControllerContext SetupControllerContext(ApiController controller)
{
    controller.ControllerContext = // new one up here or call another helper to populate object
    controller.ControllerContext.Request = new HttpRequestMessage();
    controller.ControllerContext.Request.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer fakeToken");
    controller.ControllerContext.RouteData = new HttpRouteData(new HttpRoute());
    // Add any key value pairs to route data here
    controller.ControllerContext.RouteData.Values.Add("key", valueObject);

    return controller.ControllerContext;
}


Example test code snippet:

// Arrange
_controller.ControllerContext = SetupControllerContext(_controller);
// Setup mock here to mock the data provider and return what you'd like or throw if negative test

// Act
var result = _controller.GetCoolData();

// Assert
Assert.IsNotNull(result);
// do any further validation

That's pretty much it.  There wasn't much online about how to do this so I wanted to share.  Cheers.