Question

Is it possible to disable the execution of the logger during testing?

I have this class

public class UnitTestMe {

    private final MockMe mockMe;
    private final SomethingElse something;

    private final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(this.getClass().getClass());

    public UnitTestMe(MockMe mockMe, SomethingElse something) {
        this..
    }

    public toTest() {
        logger.info("Executing toTest. MockMe a: {}, Foo: b: {}", mockMe.toString(), something.foo().bar());
        mockMe.execute();
    }
}

My Unit Test is failing with an NullPointerException because something.foo() is not a mocked object (i am using mockito with nicemock).

How can I test this class without removing the logger statement and without mocking irrelevant parts of the dependencies like something?

Edit: something is in this case a Customer Object, that is not used in the toTest() function but needed in other parts of this Class. I am using the Customer class in the logger statement to relate an action to an user.

Edit 2: Would it help to mock the logger object? I would assume that I will get an NullPointerException again, because the methods of the `something´ object are executed, too.

Answer 1

Poor answer: first decrease logging level to WARN or ERROR for this logger. Then, surround logging statement with isInfoEnabled():

if(logger.isInfoEnabled())
    logger.info("Executing toTest. MockMe a: {}, Foo: b: {}", mockMe.toString(), something.foo().bar());

---

Better one: it looks a bit weird that you are using some object only for logging, so when you are testing a toTest() method, mocked dependency is used only for logging. I understand this is just an example, but looks like there is some design flaw. I would suggest mocking SomethingElse for the sake of simplicity as well.