Is verify called automatically on Groovy's MockFor

Question

According to the javadocs, Groovy's MockFor object always ends with a verify. Its StubFor docs say calling verify is up to the user. I read that as saying that verify will automatically be called on the MockFor object. However, in looking at the groovy samples that use MockFor on a Java object (http://svn.codehaus.org/groovy/trunk/groovy/groovy-core/src/test/groovy/mock/interceptor/MockForJavaTest.groovy), they call verify explicitly. I've found in my tests that I need to do the same. Are the docs just incorrect or maybe I'm misunderstanding. Any help would be appreciated.

thanks,

Jeff

Answer 1

According to the docs (http://groovy.codehaus.org/Groovy+Mocks), the instance-style mocking that's invoked with the proxyInstance() method (for Groovy) or the proxyDelegateInstance() method (for Java, as in the example you referenced) does indeed require an explicit call to verify.

It's the class-style mocking -- which is invoked by passing in a closure to the .use method -- that does an implicit verify. That's the case for both Mock and Stub.

My understanding of the difference between a Mock and a Stub is that it's a matter of what gets verified when verify is called, not how it's called. A mock validates that events happen in a certain order while a stub only cares that events happen a certain number of times.