Question

I have two Controller unit tests and each one sets an HttpClient metaclass execute in setUp() like the following:

HttpClient.metaClass.execute = { HttpUriRequest request ->
    <return expected data for my tests>
}

Then I attempt to tear down the metaClass in tearDown() with the following code:

protected void tearDown() {
    super.tearDown()
    GroovySystem.metaClassRegistry.removeMetaClass(HttpClient.class)
}

However only one of my unit tests passes because the return from the HttpClient is incorrect/unexpected. If I add the logic needed for both tests in the metaClass.execute of both tests I get no testing failures. However this is cumbersome and impractical, especially in an agile development environment.

What am I doing wrong with trying to tear down this HttpClient metaclass registration? How can I troubleshoot this further?

I’m currently using grails 1.3.7 on a CentOS 5 install.

Edit: I should clarify that my problem is that the metaClass override is causing issues between test classes, not test cases. We’ve been setting up the metaClass override so that it will return correct data for all of the test cases in a given class. So Test class A has the metaClass data for it’s test cases and Test class B has the metaClass data for it’s test cases. The issue is that since Test class A gets tested first, test class B ends up using the metaClass definition from test class A and fails because of this.

Answer 1

The solution I ended up using is a bit of a hack but it’s easier to maintain. I just made a class in src/groovy that creates the HttpClient.metaClass and then just made each test class that needs it run the static method on the new class. That way all of the necessary code for the meta classing is in one place.