mockobject

mockobject is a simple API for working with mock objects in unit tests.

Instead of writing mock objects, that hold their behaviour internally, it is better to put the behaviour into the mock objects from the outside. That means: Don't code the behaviour hard into your mock objects, but rather configure the mock object from your test class. That way you can reuse the mockobjects by separating test code from mock-object code.

There are two ways for using the mockobject api: Either code your mock object yourself (using the Action and the Expectation classes), or let it generate automatically from the MockObjectManager . Coding the mock object yourself is useful, if it is a small class which does not adhere the inner-interface pattern, which is required by the MockObjectManager . If the classes grow bigger and more complicated, it might be useful to refactor it to the inner-interface pattern, with two advantages: It can be with a dynamically created mock object and its internal structure is more clean and easier to read, as all calls to collaboration objects are fixed in the inner-interface.

A simple introduction into the use of the mockobject api is shown in the javadoc of the Actions class. For using dynamic mock objects, take a look at MockObjectManager .

Getting started

In order to getting started, you should use the Maven build tool. This tool automatically downloads the jar files you need to work with the mockobject API.

maven.repo.remote=http://www.ibiblio.org/maven,http://jface.sourceforge.net/maven

<project>
...
  <dependencies>
  ...
    <dependency>
      <id>mockobject</id>
      <groupId>jface</groupId>
      <version>0.3-dev-2</version> <!-- Change this to the most current version -->
    </dependency>
  ...
  </dependencies>
...
</project>