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Comments on How to unittest method that involves contacting remote servers?
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How to unittest method that involves contacting remote servers?
Let's say I have this class:
class myService {
private boolean foo(T arg) { return arg == 42; }
public Response bar(U arg) {
if(foo(U.field)) {
return Response.status(Response.Status.BAD_REQUEST).build();
}
// Code that contacts a remote server
}
}
I want to unittest this with Junit. But there are some problems. I'm actually mainly interested in testing foo(), but that one is private. I could make it public, but I really don't want to do that just so that the test class can access it. I could also write a wrapper around bar() but again, it feels weird to modify the API for this purpose.
It works fine to test test cases that should fail, which in this case means that foo returns true. But in the case that foo returns false, we will reach the code that contacts remote servers, and that's not desirable.
How should I refactor this so that I can test foo via bar regardless if foo returns true or false?
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The following users marked this post as Works for me:
| User | Comment | Date |
|---|---|---|
| klutt |
Thread: Works for me Using protected made a lot of sense, and that's what I ended up doing. Also mocked a lot. |
Feb 23, 2022 at 22:56 |
I'm actually mainly interested in testing foo()
Ok, so let's do that.
I could make it public, but I really don't want to do that just so that the test class can access it
Java has 4 different access modes: private, default access, protected, and public. The typical solution is to use default access, and put your unit test into the same package. This pattern is common enough that Guava provides @VisibleForTesting to document why access has been relaxed.
Alternatively, you could move the foo method to a different class, so it can be invoked independently without cluttering the API of the class that uses it.
How to unittest method that involves contacting remote servers?
Generally, by moving the code contacting remote servers into its own method, and mocking that method in tests. To inject the mock, one usually uses dependency injection.
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