Using Mockito to test abstract classes

Question

I'd like to test an abstract class. Sure, I can manually write a mock that inherits from the class.

Can I do this using a mocking framework (I'm using Mockito) instead of hand-crafting my mock? How?

Answer 1

Assuming your test classes are in the same package (under a different source root) as your classes under test you can simply create the mock:

YourClass yourObject = mock(YourClass.class);

and call the methods you want to test just as you would any other method.

You need to provide expectations for each method that is called with the expectation on any concrete methods calling the super method - not sure how you'd do that with Mockito, but I believe it's possible with EasyMock.

All this is doing is creating a concrete instance of YouClass and saving you the effort of providing empty implementations of each abstract method.

As an aside, I often find it useful to implement the abstract class in my test, where it serves as an example implementation that I test via its public interface, although this does depend on the functionality provided by the abstract class.

Answer 2

Mocking frameworks are designed to make it easier to mock out dependencies of the class you are testing. When you use a mocking framework to mock a class, most frameworks dynamically create a subclass, and replace the method implementation with code for detecting when a method is called and returning a fake value.

When testing an abstract class, you want to execute the non-abstract methods of the Subject Under Test (SUT), so a mocking framework isn't what you want.

Part of the confusion is that the answer to the question you linked to said to hand-craft a mock that extends from your abstract class. I wouldn't call such a class a mock. A mock is a class that is used as a replacement for a dependency, is programmed with expectations, and can be queried to see if those expectations are met.

Instead, I would provide an non-abstract of your abstract class in your test. If that results in too much code, than that may be a sign that your class is difficult to extend.

An alternative solution would be to make your test case itself abstract, with an abstract method for creating the SUT (in other words, the test case would use the Template Method design pattern).

Answer 3

Try using a custom answer.

For example:

import org.mockito.Mockito;
import org.mockito.invocation.InvocationOnMock;
import org.mockito.stubbing.Answer;

public class CustomAnswer implements Answer<Object> {

    public Object answer(InvocationOnMock invocation) throws Throwable {

        Answer<Object> answer = null;

        if (isAbstract(invocation.getMethod().getModifiers())) {

            answer = Mockito.RETURNS_DEFAULTS;

        } else {

            answer = Mockito.CALLS_REAL_METHODS;
        }

        return answer.answer(invocation);
    }
}

It will return the mock for abstract methods and will call the real method for concrete methods.

Answer 4

You can achieve this by using a spy (use the latest version of Mockito 1.8+ though).

public abstract class MyAbstract {
  public String concrete() {
    return abstractMethod();
  }
  public abstract String abstractMethod();
}

public class MyAbstractImpl extends MyAbstract {
  public String abstractMethod() {
  }
}

// your test code below

MyAbstractImpl abstractImpl = spy(new MyAbstractImpl());
doReturn("Blah").when(abstractImpl).abstractMethod();
assertTrue("Blah".equals(abstractImpl.concrete()));