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Mockito is a mocking framework for unit tests written in Java. It lets you write beautiful tests with clean and simple API. This is a straightforward overview of the basic features of Mockito so you can get started with writing clean and readable tests.
Mock objects mimic real and often complex objects. They’re used in unit tests instead of actual objects when the actual object is impractical or impossible to instantiate. For example, testing a behavior which depends on an external webservice is non-deterministic and costly to set up in a unit test. Therefore it is a good idea to mock the service so it can respond fast and return expected results.
Getting started
I’m going to assume you have Mockito already in place and ready to go. Whether you got it via a build system (e.g. Maven or Gradle) or manually, it does not matter.
Fristly, let’s look at how to stub a method. We have a user data access object which communicates with a database. In a unit test it is preferred to mock data access to get deterministic results and have a faster running test suite.
To improve code readablity, use a static import
import static org.mockito.Mockito.*;Create a new mock userDao
UserDao userDao = mock(UserDao.class);Then stub user data access:
when(userDao.getById(1L)).thenReturn(new User("Mario"));This almost reads like a sentence, right? Whenever getById() is called with 1L, new user Mario is returned.
Throwing exceptions
What if instead of returning a new user you want to test an edge case. Suppose userDao is implemented to throw an exception when a user is not found. Mockito provides a thenThrow() method.
when(userDao.getById(1L)).thenThrow(new NoResultException());Keeping internal state
In some cases it might be useful to keep internal state. Think of a situation where you would like to call the same method multiple times and you need it to return different results. Here’s where Mockito’s Answer interface comes into play. It provides us a way to create stateful mocks.
Let’s look at the following example
when(applicantQueue.getNextApplicant()).thenAnswer(new Answer<Applicant>() {
private int counter;
private String[] names = new String[] {"Mario", "Luigi", "Bowser"};
@Override
public Applicant answer(InvocationOnMock invocationOnMock) throws Throwable {
return new Applicant(names[counter++]);
}
});
assertEquals("Mario", appService.processNextApplicant().getApplicantName());
assertEquals("Luigi", appService.processNextApplicant().getApplicantName());
assertEquals("Bowser", appService.processNextApplicant().getApplicantName());ApplicantQueue is an abstraction of a JMS queue. AppService has a mocked instance of ApplicantQueue and uses it in the processNextApplicant() method to retrieve the next applicant. Using the Answer interface we can mock the behaviour of the queue and return deterministic results. For a full example, checkout this Github project.
Verify number of invocations
Mockito’s verify() method is going to come handy when you have a test where you need to check now many times a method was called.
List<String> mock = (List<String>) mock(List.class);
mock.add("first element");
mock.add("second element");
verify(mock, times(2)).add(anyString());times(2) makes sure that add() was called on the list twice. anyString() is a matcher which accepts all strings. If needed, you can be very specific about what parameters were passed to add(). Let’s take a look at the following example.
verify(mock, never()).add("third element");The test will pass because "third element" was never added to the list. For a full example, checkout this Github project.
Capture method parameters
By now you should know how to mock complex objects and their behaviour in unit tests but it would be good to know how to capture and check the parameters passed to a mock. Mockito provides an ArgumentCaptor class which, as the name implies, can be used to capture arguments for further assertion.
Application application = new Application("Mario");
ArgumentCaptor<Application> captor = forClass(Application.class);
queue.push(application);
verify(queue).push(captor.capture());
assertEquals("Mario", captor.getValue().getApplicantName());New ArgumentCaptor is created and its capture() method is called inside of verification. Later it is possible to retrieve the value that was passed to the push() method. For a full example, checkout this Github project.
Summary
Mockito is much larger than this relatively short blog post. Make sure to check out Mockito’s website for more information and documentation.