Why methods need to be declared virtual

[vishy]

Hi,
I was mocking a concrete class and its methods.I found tha I have to
declare those methods as virtual.Why so? Is it because rhinomocks
creates a class at runtime which it inherits from the concrete class?
regards
vishy

[isaiah perumalla]

yep that right, the mocking framework creates a mock implementation for you conrecte class by subclassing it(your concrete class you want to mock must not be sealed) and overrides the method you want to call. this cant be done if you methods are not virtual, since all methods in C# are not virtual by default.

 

isaiah

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Isaiah Perumalla

[isaiah perumalla]

sorry the framework doesnt actually subclass the concrete class, what it does is, it uses reflection to create a DynamicProxy at runtime which can only intercept virtual method calls.

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Isaiah Perumalla

[Ayende Rahien]

Dynamic Proxy subclass the class at runtime, you were right the first time.

[isaiah perumalla]

thanks for clarifying that

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Isaiah Perumalla