Mocking a URL in Java

Question

We have a URL object in one of our Java classes that we want to mock, but it\'s a final class so we cannot. We do not want to go a level above, and mock the InputStream beca

Answer 1

Create a URL-object pointing to the test class itself.

final URL url = 
    new URL("file://" + getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath());

Answer 2

Like Rob said, if what you want is to mock the connection returned from the URL, you can extend URLStreamHandler. For instance, with mockito:

final URLConnection mockUrlCon = mock(URLConnection.class);

ByteArrayInputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(
        "<myList></myList>".getBytes("UTF-8"));
doReturn(is).when(mockUrlCon).getInputStream();

//make getLastModified() return first 10, then 11
when(mockUrlCon.getLastModified()).thenReturn((Long)10L, (Long)11L);

URLStreamHandler stubUrlHandler = new URLStreamHandler() {
    @Override
     protected URLConnection openConnection(URL u) throws IOException {
        return mockUrlCon;
     }            
};
URL url = new URL("foo", "bar", 99, "/foobar", stubUrlHandler);
doReturn(url).when(mockClassloader).getResource("pseudo-xml-path");

Answer 3

I would look again at why you want to mock a final data object. Since by definition you aren't subclassing the object in your actual code, and it's not going to be the object under test, you shouldn't need to white-box test this code; just pass in whatever (real) URL objects are appropriate, and check the output.

Mock objects are useful when it's difficult to create a real object appropriate, or the real object's method are either time-consuming or depend on some stateful external resource (like a database). Neither of these apply in this case so I can't see why you can't just construct a real URL object representing the appropriate resource location.

Answer 4

Does the URL class implement an interface? If so then you could instantiate it using inversion of control or a configurable factory, rather than by direct construction, this would allow you to inject/construct a test instance at test runtime rather than the final instance you currently have.

Answer 5

I think you can use Powermock to do this. I was able to mock URL class using PowerMock lately. Hope this helps.

/* Actual class */

import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;

public class TestClass {

    public URL getUrl()
        throws MalformedURLException {

        URL url = new URL("http://localhost/");
        return url;
    }
}

/* Test class */

import java.net.URL;

import junit.framework.Assert;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.mockito.Mockito;
import org.powermock.api.mockito.PowerMockito;
import org.powermock.core.classloader.annotations.PrepareForTest;
import org.powermock.modules.junit4.PowerMockRunner;

@RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)
@PrepareForTest(value = { TestClass.class })
public class TestClassTest {

    private TestClass testClass = new TestClass();

    @Test
    public void shouldReturnUrl()
        throws Exception {

        URL url = PowerMockito.mock(URL.class);
        PowerMockito.whenNew(URL.class).withParameterTypes(String.class)
                .withArguments(Mockito.anyString()).thenReturn(url);
        URL url1 = testClass.getUrl();
        Assert.assertNotNull(url1);
    }
}

Answer 6

If you don't want to create a wrapper :

Register a URLStreamHandlerFactory

Make the method you want public

Mock the chain

abstract public class AbstractPublicStreamHandler extends URLStreamHandler {
    @Override
    public URLConnection openConnection(URL url) throws IOException {
        return null;
    }
}

public class UrlTest {
    private URLStreamHandlerFactory urlStreamHandlerFactory;

    @Before
    public void setUp() throws Exception {
        urlStreamHandlerFactory = Mockito.mock(URLStreamHandlerFactory.class);
        URL.setURLStreamHandlerFactory(urlStreamHandlerFactory);
    }

    @Test
    public void should_return_mocked_url() throws Exception {
        // GIVEN
        AbstractPublicStreamHandler publicStreamHandler = Mockito.mock(AbstractPublicStreamHandler.class);
        Mockito.doReturn(publicStreamHandler).when(urlStreamHandlerFactory).createURLStreamHandler(Matchers.eq("http"));

        URLConnection mockedConnection = Mockito.mock(URLConnection.class);
        Mockito.doReturn(mockedConnection).when(publicStreamHandler).openConnection(Matchers.any(URL.class));

        Mockito.doReturn(new ByteArrayInputStream("hello".getBytes("UTF-8"))).when(mockedConnection).getInputStream();

        // WHEN
        URLConnection connection = new URL("http://localhost/").openConnection();

        // THEN
        Assertions.assertThat(new MockUtil().isMock(connection)).isTrue();
        Assertions.assertThat(IOUtils.toString(connection.getInputStream(), "UTF-8")).isEqualTo("hello");
    }
}

PS : I don't know how to cancel the numbered list auto-spacing after last line