Strange behaviour with SpecflowPlusRunner using an older version of Newtonsoft,Json - how do you update it? - specflow

Question

I have a dotnet core 3.1 class library, providing some service implementations. I wanted to use Specflow to create some BDD tests to test various scenarios with my service.
I created a Specflow tests project which uses the SpecflowPlus Test Runner. If I inspect my "deps.json" file present in my bin folder, all references to NewtonSoft.Json are set to version 12.0.3 - currently the latest version.
However, when the solution is built, some files are copied to this location \Specflow.Tests\bin\Debug\netcoreapp3.1\SpecFlowPlusRunner\ - one of them being \Specflow.Tests\bin\Debug\netcoreapp3.1\SpecFlowPlusRunner\netcoreapp3.1\Newtonsoft.Json.dll
This version of Newtonsoft.Json is only 11.0.2
If I look at "Manage Nuget Packages for Solution" and switch to the Consolidation tab, all versions referenced are 12.0.3 - I manually added Newtonsoft.Json to all projects in an attempt to equal up the versions.
When I run the tests, I get this error:
System.InvalidCastException: '[A]Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject cannot be cast to [B]Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject.
Type A originates from 'Newtonsoft.Json, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=30ad4fe6b2a6aeed' in the context 'Default' at location 'C:\Source\Repos\BSP_Infrastructure\deployment\CleanUp\src\WTW.ICT.BSP.CleanUp.Specflow.Tests\bin\Debug\netcoreapp3.1\SpecFlowPlusRunner\netcoreapp3.1\Newtonsoft.Json.dll'.
Type B originates from 'Newtonsoft.Json, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=30ad4fe6b2a6aeed' in the context 'Default' at location 'C:\Users\ian64639\.nuget\packages\newtonsoft.json\12.0.3\lib\netstandard2.0\Newtonsoft.Json.dll'.'
My code does some casting, internal to the class library:
public async Task<string[]> GetSpaUris(string id)
{
var app = await GetApplicationRegistrationAsync(id).ConfigureAwait(false);
return GetSpaUris(app);
}
public string[] GetSpaUris(Application application) => ((JArray)((JObject)application.AdditionalData["spa"])["redirectUris"]).ToObject<string[]>();
And returns a string array. I dont return any JArray or JObject objects/references, so this should not "leak" any Newtonsoft.Json dependencies. I am not trying to cast JObject to JObject across projects, so no casting should occur.
I created a small console app
var hostBuilder = new HostBuilder();
var svc = hostBuilder.MyHost.Services.GetService<ApplicationRegistrationService>();
var uris = await svc.GetSpaUris("b3340c1e-c37a-471f-8c90-4e25f27990e8");
And this has no such casting issues. So it seems its the version of Newtonsoft.Json that the SpecflowPlus Runner utilises that is likely to the be the issue.
I return a string[] to try and avoid having dependency crossover issues though.
I looked at the Specflow docs, and it says you can create a specflow.json config file, and you can specify "Custom" dependencies.
dependencies custom dependencies Specifies custom dependencies for the SpecFlow runtime. See Plugins for details. Default: not specified
https://docs.specflow.org/projects/specflow/en/latest/Extend/Plugins.md
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Anyone got any ideas how I can resolve it? Is custom dependencies my salvation? If so, does anyone know how?

Answer 1

Custom dependencies are only for changing the behavior of SpecFlow. They have nothing to do with this.
Newtonsoft.Json 11 is used by the SpecFlow+ Runner internally. As dependencies in test runners are not resolved with normal NuGet dependencies and need to be shipped with the test runner NuGet package. That's why you are seeing the v11 assembly also if you update all projects to v12.
And because of assembly loading in .NET, this is getting complicated and you get this error.
At the moment the only thing I can think of, that will unblock you is that you are using also Newtonsoft.Json v11. I hope this is possible.
Please open an issue at https://github.com/SpecFlowOSS/SpecFlow/ about this, so we can have a look at it and fix this.
Full disclosure: I am the community manager of SpecFlow and SpecFlow+