Question

Does mocking a method using mockito ensures that mocked method will never be called? I have Main class which contains some code i want to write unit tests for and i have one unit test class MainTest which contains unit tests for Main class.

eg:

Source Class:

package abc;

public class Main {

    public int check1() {
        int num = 10;
        num = modify(num);
        return num;
    }

    public int modify(int num) {
        if (num % 10 == 0) return num / 10;
        return -1;
    }
}

Junit Test (using mockito)

package abc;

import junit.framework.Assert;

import org.junit.BeforeClass;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.mockito.Mockito;

public class MainTest {

    private static Main main;

    @BeforeClass
    public static void setUp() {
        main = Mockito.mock(Main.class);
        Mockito.when(main.modify(10)).thenReturn(5);
    }

    @Test
    public void testCheck1() {
        Test1 main1 = new Main();
        int num = main.check1();
        Assert.assertEquals(5, num);
    }
}

This test is failing. Why?

Answer 1

EDITED
Because you didn’t provide a behavior for check1(). ALL methods get mocked, so without you providing a behavior, check1() returns a default value for the return type of int, which is 0. Furthermore, check1() since it is mocked does not even get to call modify().

If you are trying to test a class, you never mock the Class Under Test. On rare occasion, you might have to Spy a class under test. Rather, you mock collaborators only.

I am guessing your example was a contrived one (I hope). But if you are writing and testing a class where you think you want to modify some internal method’s behavior, I see two likely probabilities:

1. You may need to refactor the functionality of the method you want to mock-out into a collaborator class. Then it makes sense to go ahead and mock that behavior as a collaborator.
2. You may also may need to modify the API so that you can pass in what is going to change. In your case, check1() hard-codes the value it passes to modify(), which is why you are trying to mock modify(). If instead that value were a parameter to check1() or a settable field in class Main, then there wouldn’t even be a need to use a mock at all.