Mocking Static Blocks in Java

Question

My motto for Java is \"just because Java has static blocks, it doesn\'t mean that you should be using them.\" Jokes aside, there are a lot of tricks in Java that make testing a

Answer 1

Sounds to me like you are treating a symptom: poor design with dependencies on static initialization. Maybe some refactoring is the real solution. It sounds like you've already done a little refactoring with your staticInit() function, but maybe that function needs to be called from the constructor, not from a static initializer. If you can do away with static initializers period, you will be better off. Only you can make this decision (I can't see your codebase) but some refactoring will definitely help.

As for mocking, I use EasyMock, but I have run into the same issue. Side effects of static initializers in legacy code make testing difficult. Our answer was to refactor out the static initializer.