Mocking member variables of a class using Mockito

Question

I am a newbie to development and to unit tests in particular . I guess my requirement is pretty simple, but I am keen to know others thoughts on this.

Suppose I h

Answer 1

If you want an alternative to ReflectionTestUtils from Spring in mockito, use

Whitebox.setInternalState(first, "second", sec);

Answer 2

You need to provide a way of accessing the member variables so you can pass in a mock (the most common ways would be a setter method or a constructor which takes a parameter).

If your code doesn't provide a way of doing this, it's incorrectly factored for TDD (Test Driven Development).

Answer 3

Yes, this can be done, as the following test shows (written with the JMockit mocking API, which I develop):

@Test
public void testFirst(@Mocked final Second sec) {
    new NonStrictExpectations() {{ sec.doSecond(); result = "Stubbed Second"; }};

    First first = new First();
    assertEquals("Stubbed Second", first.doSecond());
}

With Mockito, however, such a test cannot be written. This is due to the way mocking is implemented in Mockito, where a subclass of the class to be mocked is created; only instances of this "mock" subclass can have mocked behavior, so you need to have the tested code use them instead of any other instance.

Answer 4

If you look closely at your code you'll see that the second property in your test is still an instance of Second, not a mock (you don't pass the mock to first in your code).

The simplest way would be to create a setter for second in First class and pass it the mock explicitly.

Like this:

public class First {

Second second ;

public First(){
    second = new Second();
}

public String doSecond(){
    return second.doSecond();
}

    public void setSecond(Second second) {
    this.second = second;
    }


}

class Second {

public String doSecond(){
    return "Do Something";
}
}

....

public void testFirst(){
Second sec = mock(Second.class);
when(sec.doSecond()).thenReturn("Stubbed Second");


First first = new First();
first.setSecond(sec)
assertEquals("Stubbed Second", first.doSecond());
}

Another would be to pass a Second instance as First's constructor parameter.

If you can't modify the code, I think the only option would be to use reflection:

public void testFirst(){
    Second sec = mock(Second.class);
    when(sec.doSecond()).thenReturn("Stubbed Second");


    First first = new First();
    Field privateField = PrivateObject.class.
        getDeclaredField("second");

    privateField.setAccessible(true);

    privateField.set(first, sec);

    assertEquals("Stubbed Second", first.doSecond());
}

But you probably can, as it's rare to do tests on code you don't control (although one can imagine a scenario where you have to test an external library cause it's author didn't :))

Answer 5

I had the same issue where a private value was not set because Mockito does not call super constructors. Here is how I augment mocking with reflection.

First, I created a TestUtils class that contains many helpful utils including these reflection methods. Reflection access is a bit wonky to implement each time. I created these methods to test code on projects that, for one reason or another, had no mocking package and I was not invited to include it.

public class TestUtils {
    // get a static class value
    public static Object reflectValue(Class<?> classToReflect, String fieldNameValueToFetch) {
        try {
            Field reflectField  = reflectField(classToReflect, fieldNameValueToFetch);
            reflectField.setAccessible(true);
            Object reflectValue = reflectField.get(classToReflect);
            return reflectValue;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            fail("Failed to reflect "+fieldNameValueToFetch);
        }
        return null;
    }
    // get an instance value
    public static Object reflectValue(Object objToReflect, String fieldNameValueToFetch) {
        try {
            Field reflectField  = reflectField(objToReflect.getClass(), fieldNameValueToFetch);
            Object reflectValue = reflectField.get(objToReflect);
            return reflectValue;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            fail("Failed to reflect "+fieldNameValueToFetch);
        }
        return null;
    }
    // find a field in the class tree
    public static Field reflectField(Class<?> classToReflect, String fieldNameValueToFetch) {
        try {
            Field reflectField = null;
            Class<?> classForReflect = classToReflect;
            do {
                try {
                    reflectField = classForReflect.getDeclaredField(fieldNameValueToFetch);
                } catch (NoSuchFieldException e) {
                    classForReflect = classForReflect.getSuperclass();
                }
            } while (reflectField==null || classForReflect==null);
            reflectField.setAccessible(true);
            return reflectField;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            fail("Failed to reflect "+fieldNameValueToFetch +" from "+ classToReflect);
        }
        return null;
    }
    // set a value with no setter
    public static void refectSetValue(Object objToReflect, String fieldNameToSet, Object valueToSet) {
        try {
            Field reflectField  = reflectField(objToReflect.getClass(), fieldNameToSet);
            reflectField.set(objToReflect, valueToSet);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            fail("Failed to reflectively set "+ fieldNameToSet +"="+ valueToSet);
        }
    }

}

Then I can test the class with a private variable like this. This is useful for mocking deep in class trees that you have no control as well.

@Test
public void testWithRectiveMock() throws Exception {
    // mock the base class using Mockito
    ClassToMock mock = Mockito.mock(ClassToMock.class);
    TestUtils.refectSetValue(mock, "privateVariable", "newValue");
    // and this does not prevent normal mocking
    Mockito.when(mock.somthingElse()).thenReturn("anotherThing");
    // ... then do your asserts
}

I modified my code from my actual project here, in page. There could be a compile issue or two. I think you get the general idea. Feel free to grab the code and use it if you find it useful.

Answer 6

You can mock any member variable of a Mockito Mock with ReflectionTestUtils

ReflectionTestUtils.setField(yourMock, "memberFieldName", value);