How to capture a list of specific type with mockito

Question

Is there a way to capture a list of specific type using mockitos ArgumentCaptore. This doesn\'t work:

ArgumentCaptor> argumen         


        

Answer 1

The nested generics-problem can be avoided with the @Captor annotation:

public class Test{

    @Mock
    private Service service;

    @Captor
    private ArgumentCaptor<ArrayList<SomeType>> captor;

    @Before
    public void init(){
        MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this);
    }

    @Test 
    public void shouldDoStuffWithListValues() {
        //...
        verify(service).doStuff(captor.capture()));
    }
}

Answer 2

List<String> mockedList = mock(List.class);

List<String> l = new ArrayList();
l.add("someElement");

mockedList.addAll(l);

ArgumentCaptor<List> argumentCaptor = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(List.class);

verify(mockedList).addAll(argumentCaptor.capture());

List<String> capturedArgument = argumentCaptor.<List<String>>getValue();

assertThat(capturedArgument, hasItem("someElement"));

Answer 3

I had the same issue with testing activity in my Android app. I used ActivityInstrumentationTestCase2 and MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this); didn't work. I solved this issue with another class with respectively field. For example:

class CaptorHolder {

        @Captor
        ArgumentCaptor<Callback<AuthResponse>> captor;

        public CaptorHolder() {
            MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this);
        }
    }

Then, in activity test method:

HubstaffService hubstaffService = mock(HubstaffService.class);
fragment.setHubstaffService(hubstaffService);

CaptorHolder captorHolder = new CaptorHolder();
ArgumentCaptor<Callback<AuthResponse>> captor = captorHolder.captor;

onView(withId(R.id.signInBtn))
        .perform(click());

verify(hubstaffService).authorize(anyString(), anyString(), captor.capture());
Callback<AuthResponse> callback = captor.getValue();

Answer 4

Yeah, this is a general generics problem, not mockito-specific.

There is no class object for ArrayList<SomeType>, and thus you can't type-safely pass such an object to a method requiring a Class<ArrayList<SomeType>>.

You can cast the object to the right type:

Class<ArrayList<SomeType>> listClass =
              (Class<ArrayList<SomeType>>)(Class)ArrayList.class;
ArgumentCaptor<ArrayList<SomeType>> argument = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(listClass);

This will give some warnings about unsafe casts, and of course your ArgumentCaptor can't really differentiate between ArrayList<SomeType> and ArrayList<AnotherType> without maybe inspecting the elements.

(As mentioned in the other answer, while this is a general generics problem, there is a Mockito-specific solution for the type-safety problem with the @Captor annotation. It still can't distinguish between an ArrayList<SomeType> and an ArrayList<OtherType>.)

Edit:

Take also a look at tenshis comment. You can change the original code from Paŭlo Ebermann to this (much simpler)

final ArgumentCaptor<List<SomeType>> listCaptor
        = ArgumentCaptor.forClass((Class) List.class);

Answer 5

There is an open issue in Mockito's GitHub about this exact problem.

I have found a simple workaround that does not force you to use annotations in your tests:

import org.mockito.ArgumentCaptor;
import org.mockito.Captor;
import org.mockito.MockitoAnnotations;

public final class MockitoCaptorExtensions {

    public static <T> ArgumentCaptor<T> captorFor(final CaptorTypeReference<T> argumentTypeReference) {
        return new CaptorContainer<T>().captor;
    }

    public static <T> ArgumentCaptor<T> captorFor(final Class<T> argumentClass) {
        return ArgumentCaptor.forClass(argumentClass);
    }

    public interface CaptorTypeReference<T> {

        static <T> CaptorTypeReference<T> genericType() {
            return new CaptorTypeReference<T>() {
            };
        }

        default T nullOfGenericType() {
            return null;
        }

    }

    private static final class CaptorContainer<T> {

        @Captor
        private ArgumentCaptor<T> captor;

        private CaptorContainer() {
            MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this);
        }

    }

}

What happens here is that we create a new class with the @Captor annotation and inject the captor into it. Then we just extract the captor and return it from our static method.

In your test you can use it like so:

ArgumentCaptor<Supplier<Set<List<Object>>>> fancyCaptor = captorFor(genericType());

Or with syntax that resembles Jackson's TypeReference:

ArgumentCaptor<Supplier<Set<List<Object>>>> fancyCaptor = captorFor(
    new CaptorTypeReference<Supplier<Set<List<Object>>>>() {
    }
);

It works, because Mockito doesn't actually need any type information (unlike serializers, for example).

Answer 6

For an earlier version of junit, you can do

Class<Map<String, String>> mapClass = (Class) Map.class;
ArgumentCaptor<Map<String, String>> mapCaptor = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(mapClass);