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I have started to study JMock. My goal is to write JUnit tests for Spring application, a.k.a controllers and domain classes. In controllers data from database and other services is put to models. I need to make sure that the data is persistent for testing, so basically i need to put the test data to database before test, and erase it after. I guess this could be done with mock objects, not autowiring the real beans.

I have googled. Some pages say only interfaces can be mocked. Some say all objects can be mocked. Some say even that DAO's should not be mocked. I'm confused.

Can anyone tell me, is JMock essential in Spring application testing and where to get started?

Vikdor
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mjgirl
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  • In order to save data before a test and delete afterwards, you do not need to use the `jMock` library. You can simply use the `@Before` and `@After` annotations from the `JUnit` framework. – AxxA Osiris Nov 14 '12 at 12:30
  • I know. The data comes and goes with datasource, which is usually autowired - but should it be mock in tests? Thats one of my questions. – mjgirl Nov 14 '12 at 12:36

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Mocking would be needed when

  • you want to construct a data object on the fly without any persistent storage and use it during testing.
  • you want to simulate an operation without actually running it.

In your case, you have test data source, except that the data is loaded during pre-testing stage and cleared during post-testing stage. So, you don't need mocking for this purpose.

You would need mocking if you want to simulate a call to some controller without calling the actual code in the controller.

We do something similar where

  • our test data is in JSON format and is loaded into an in-memory HSQL DB when our test suite starts (using a custom loader).
  • our external service clients are mocked so that we don't call the services during testing, instead return the mocked responses.
  • at the end of testing, the HSQL DB is simply discarded and so there is no need to clear the test data.

HTH.

Vikdor
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