What are the differences between MOQ and AutoFixtu

Question

I have a fair amount of experience using MOQ, while I've recently have stumbled into AutoFixture. What are the differences between these frameworks?

Answer 1

The FAQ explains the difference. In short

AutoFixture uses Reflection to create 'well-behaved' instances of public types. It auto-generates instances of other types if necessary to fill in arguments for a constructor, and also assigns values to public writable properties. In essence, it simply uses the requested type's public API to instantiate and populate it. It doesn't do anything that you, as a developer, couldn't do manually - it just does it for you automatically.

In contrast, most Dynamic Mock libraries derive from known types to override the behavior of virtual members. Their purpose is to perform Behavior Verification of the System Under Test (SUT).

You can combine AutoFixture with Moq to turn it into an automocking container.