EasyMock Class Extension 2.2.2 Readme

Documentation for release 2.2.2 (April 12 2007)
© 2003-2007 OFFIS, Henri Tremblay.

The EasyMock Class Extension allows to generate Mock Objects for classes.

Requirements

The EasyMock Class Extension requires Java 5 or above, EasyMock 2.1, cglib 2.1 (2.0.x also works but cannot mock a class without visible constructor), asm (use the version that matches your cglib version, you can also use cglib-nodep-2.1.jar which includes asm) and JUnit 4 to run the tests.

Usage

To generate Mock Objects for classes and interfaces, use

import static org.easymock.classextension.EasyMock.*;

instead of

import static org.easymock.EasyMock.*;

You will then create a mock just like with EasyMock by doing something like this:

ToMock mock = createMock(ToMock.class);

From now on, you will use your mock just like you use to do with EasyMock. Note that createNiceMock, createStrictMock, createStrictControl, createControl and createNiceControl methods are also available. The create...Control() methods return org.easymock.classextension.IMocksControl, an extension of EasyMock's IMocksControl.

Advanced

Partial mocking

Sometimes you may need to mock only some methods of a class and keep the normal behavior of others. This usually happens when you want to test a method that calls some others in the same class. So you want to keep the normal behavior of the tested method and mock the others.

In this case, the first thing to do is to consider a refactoring since most of the time this problem caused by a bad design. If it's not the case or if you can't do otherwise because of some development constraints, here's the solution.

ToMock mock = createMock(ToMock.class, 
   new Method[] { ToMock.class.getMethod("mockedMethod", null) } );

In this case only the methods passed to createMock will be mocked (mockedMethod() in the example). The others will still behave as they used to.

The class extension's IMocksControl also provides a createMock() method to create partial mocks.

Replace default instantiator

For some reason (usually an unsupported JVM), it is possible that EasyMock CE isn't able to create a mock in your environment. Under the hood, class instantiation is implemented with a factory pattern. In case of failure, you can replace the default instantiator with:

• The good old DefaultClassInstantiator which works well with Serializable classes and otherwise tries to guess the best constructor and parameters to use.
• You own instantiator which only needs to implement IClassInstantiator.

You set this new instantiator using ClassInstantiatorFactory.setInstantiator(). You can set back the default one with setDefaultInstantiator().

Important: The instantiator is kept statically so it will stick between your unit tests. Make sure you reset it if needed.

Limitations

EasyMock Class Extension provides a built-in behavior for equals(), toString() and hashCode(). It means that you cannot record your own behavior for these methods. It is coherent with what EasyMock do. This limitation is considered to be a feature that prevents you from having to care about these methods.

Final methods cannot be mocked. If called, their normal code will be executed.

Class instantiation is performed using Objenesis. Supported JVMs are listed here.

In the Advanced section, it was explained how to do partial mocking. One important thing is that private methods are never mocked. So if your method under test is calling some private methods, you will need to test them as well since you cannot mock them.

Authors

The EasyMock Class Extension is currently maintained by Henri Tremblay.

It was initially developed by Joel Shellman, Chad Woolley and Henri Tremblay on the files section of Yahoo!Groups.