This blog is about Java (advanced Java topics like Reflection, Byte Code transformation, Code Generation), Maven, Web technologies, Raspberry Pi and IT in general.

Freitag, 13. Juni 2014

Mock Framework vs Anonymous Class for Unit Tests



I recently discussed at work what to use for unit tests: a mock framework (e.g. Mockito) or anonymous classes. Surprisingly for my only one person choose anonymous classes and there where many votes for the mock framework. I prefer myself the mock framework. 

The benefits of a mock framework:
  • if you mock an interface within multiple tests with anonymous classes and then you change the interface you have to touch all of these test files. Even if the new added method doesn't break the old tests.
  • if the interface has many methods but you need only a few of them, the anonymous class still have to implement each method. So it's quite messy and doesn't help to read the code.
  • sure your IDE will generate the anonymous class with all methods with one keystroke. But if you want to make explicit which method is used in the test than you have to rewrite all unnecessary methods to something like this: throw new RuntimeException("not implemented"). Because otherwise you can't decide if the test relies on the method to return null or it's not used for the test.
  • the code navigation in the IDE (at least IntelliJ) gets messed up because of the anonymous test classes. If you want to jump to the method implementation of an interface and there is one class implementing the interface than IntelliJ will jump directly to the correct code (ctrl+shift+b). But if in the test classes the anonymous mock classes are defined than IntelliJ will show you all anonymous classes which are in this case completely uninteresting.
  • mocks are cleaner to write. if you want different return values by different parameters than you just define them in two lines. In an anonymous class you have to use if/else.
  • mocks are more powerful. You can verify if the methods got called with the right parameters and are called exactly x times.
There is just one downside of mock frameworks: you have to learn one of them. 
It pays off to learn a mock framework and to use it because of all the benefits you get from it (see above). I am currently using Mockito which has a very easy and clean API.

Keine Kommentare:

Kommentar veröffentlichen