Mocking scala object

Question

I am using mockito and trying to mock a scala object.

object Sample { }
//test
class SomeTest extends Specification with ScalaTest with Mockito {
    "mocking should succeed" in {
        val mockedSample = mock[Sample]
     }
}

This gives me two compilation errors.

error: Not found type Sample
error: could not find implicit value for parameter m:
scala.reflect.ClassManifest[<error>]

If I change Sample from object to class it works. Is is possible to mock scala objects with mockito? If yes how?

Answer 1

As written, your Sample is a pure singleton. Its type is its own and there is only one member of that type, period. Scala objects can extend another class (possibly abstract, if it supplies the necessary definitions to make it a concrete) and traits. Doing that gives it a type identity that includes those ancestors.

I don't know what Mockito is really doing, but to my mind, what you're asking for is strictly at odds with what a Scala object is.

Answer 2

Keep in mind that you can mock the methods of an object if you lift them to functions.

case class Person(name: String)
object Person {
  def listToJson(lp: List[Person]) = "some actual implementation"
}

class ClassUnderTest(listToJson: (List[Person]) => String = Person.listToJson(_)) {
  def testIt(lp: List[Person]) = listToJson(lp)
}

import org.specs._
import org.specs.mock.Mockito
import org.mockito.Matchers._  

class ASpec extends Specification with Mockito {
  "a thing" should {
    "do whatever" in {
      val m = mock[(List[Person]) => String]
      val subject = new ClassUnderTest(m)
      m(Nil) returns "mocked!"
      subject.testIt(Nil) must_== "mocked! (this will fail on purpose)"
    }
  }
}

Here I'm not mocking the object Person, but the method on it (which is probably what the OP was intending).

The test result shows the mocking works:

[info] == ASpec ==
[error] x a thing should
[error]   x do whatever
[error]     'mocked![]' is not equal to 'mocked![ (this will fail on purpose)]' (ASpec.scala:21)
[info] == ASpec ==

Meanwhile, the production-time usage of the ClassUnderTest is simply new ClassUnderTest due to the injected function being a default argument.

Answer 3

I've recently released ScalaMock, a mocking library for Scala that can, among other things, mock singleton (and companion) objects.