Spring beans redefinition in unit test environment

springspring-testunit testing

We are using Spring for my application purposes, and Spring Testing framework for unit tests. We have a small problem though: the application code loads a Spring application context from a list of locations (XML files) in the classpath. But when we run our unit tests, we want some of the Spring beans to be mocks instead of full-fledged implementation classes. Moreover, for some unit tests we want some beans to become mocks, while for other unit tests we want other beans to become mocks, as we are testing different layers of the application.

All this means I want to redefine specific beans of the application context and refresh the context when desired. While doing this, I want to redefine only a small portion of the beans located in one (or several) original XML beans definition file. I cannot find an easy way to do it. It's always regarded that Spring is a unit-testing-friendly framework, so I must be missing something here.

Do you have any ideas how to do it?

Thanks!

Best Answer

I would propose a custom TestClass and some easy rules for the locations of the spring bean.xml:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {
    "classpath*:spring/*.xml",
    "classpath*:spring/persistence/*.xml",
    "classpath*:spring/mock/*.xml"})
@Transactional
@TestExecutionListeners({
    DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.class,
    TransactionalTestExecutionListener.class,
    DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener.class})
public abstract class AbstractHibernateTests implements ApplicationContextAware {

    /**
     * Logger for Subclasses.
     */
    protected final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(getClass());

    /**
     * The {@link ApplicationContext} that was injected into this test instance
     * via {@link #setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext)}.
     */
    protected ApplicationContext applicationContext;

    /**
     * Set the {@link ApplicationContext} to be used by this test instance,
     * provided via {@link ApplicationContextAware} semantics.
     */
    @Override
    public final void setApplicationContext(
            final ApplicationContext applicationContext) {
        this.applicationContext = applicationContext;
    }
}

If there are mock-bean.xml in the specified location, they will override all "real" bean.xml files in the "normal" locations - your normal locations might differ.

But … I would never mix mock and non-mock beans, as it's hard to trace problems when the application grows older.

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The simplest way to deal with testing complex, multithreaded application code is this: If it's too complex to test, you're doing it wrong. If you have a single instance that has multiple threads acting upon it, and you can't test situations where these threads step all over each other, then your design needs to be redone. It's both as simple and as complex as this.

There are many ways to program for multithreading that avoids threads running through instances at the same time. The simplest is to make all your objects immutable. Of course, that's not usually possible. So you have to identify those places in your design where threads interact with the same instance and reduce the number of those places. By doing this, you isolate a few classes where multithreading actually occurs, reducing the overall complexity of testing your system.

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Update:

Some 10 years later perhaps the best way to test a private method, or any inaccessible member, is via @Jailbreak from the Manifold framework.
@Jailbreak Foo foo = new Foo();
// Direct, *type-safe* access to *all* foo's members
foo.privateMethod(x, y, z);
foo.privateField = value;
This way your code remains type-safe and readable. No design compromises, no overexposing methods and fields for the sake of tests.

If you have somewhat of a legacy Java application, and you're not allowed to change the visibility of your methods, the best way to test private methods is to use reflection.

Internally we're using helpers to get/set private and private static variables as well as invoke private and private static methods. The following patterns will let you do pretty much anything related to the private methods and fields. Of course, you can't change private static final variables through reflection.

Method method = TargetClass.getDeclaredMethod(methodName, argClasses);
method.setAccessible(true);
return method.invoke(targetObject, argObjects);

And for fields:

Field field = TargetClass.getDeclaredField(fieldName);
field.setAccessible(true);
field.set(object, value);

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1. TargetClass.getDeclaredMethod(methodName, argClasses) lets you look into private methods. The same thing applies for getDeclaredField.
2. The setAccessible(true) is required to play around with privates.

Best Answer

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