How do I test Guice injections?

Question

I gave to Google Guice the responsibility of wiring my objects. But, how can I test if the bindings are working well?

For example, suppose we have a class A which has a dependence B. How can I test that B is injected correctly?

class A {
    private B b;
    public A() {}

    @Inject
    public void setB(B b) {
        this.b = b
    }
}

Notice that A hasn't got a getB() method and I want to assert that A.b isn't null.

Answer 1

For any complex Guice project, you should add tests to make sure that the modules can be used to create your classes. In your example, if B were a type that Guice couldn't figure out how to create, then Guice won't be able to create A. If A wasn't needed to start the server but was needed when your server was handling a request, that would cause problems.

In my projects, I write tests for non-trivial modules. For each module, I use requireBinding() to declare what bindings the module requires but doesn't define. In my tests, I create a Guice injector using the module under test and another module that provides the required bindings. Here's an example using JUnit4 and JMock:

/** Module that provides LoginService */
public class LoginServiceModule extends AbstractModule {
  @Override 
  protected void configure() {
    requireBinding(UserDao.class);
  }

  @Provides
  LoginService provideLoginService(UserDao dao) {
    ...
  }
}

@RunWith(JMock.class)
public class LoginServiceModuleTest {
  private final Mockery context = new Mockery();

  @Test
  public void testModule() {
    Injector injector = Guice.createInjector(
        new LoginServiceModule(), new ModuleDeps());

    // next line will throw an exception if dependencies missing
    injector.getProvider(LoginService.class);
  }

  private class ModuleDeps extends AbstractModule {
    private final UserDao fakeUserDao;

    public ModuleDeps() {
      fakeUserDao = context.mock(UserDao.class);
    }

    @Override 
    protected void configure() {}

    @Provides
    Server provideUserDao() {
      return fakeUserDao;
    }
  }
}

Notice how the test only asks for a provider. That's sufficient to determine that Guice could resolve the bindings. If LoginService was created by a provider method, this test wouldn't test the code in the provider method.

This test also doesn't test that you binded the right thing to UserDao, or that UserDao was scoped correctly. Some would argue that those types of things are rarely worth checking; if there's a problem, it happens once. You should "test until fear turns to boredom."

I find Module tests useful because I often add new injection points, and it's easy to forget to add a binding.

The requireBinding() calls can help Guice catch missing bindings before it returns your injector! In the above example, the test would still work if the requireBinding() calls were not there, but I like having them because they serve as documentation.

For more complicated modules (like my root module) I might use Modules.override() to override bindings that I don't want at test time (for instance, if I want to verify that my root object to be created, I probably don't want it to create an object that will connect to the database). For simple projects, you might only test the top-level module.

Note that Guice will not inject nulls unless the field as annotated with @Nullable so you very rarely need to verify that the injected objects are non-null in your tests. In fact, when I annotate constructors with @Inject I do not bother to check if the parameters are null (in fact, my tests often inject null into the constructor to keep the tests simple).

Answer 2

Another way to test your configuration is by having a test suite that tests your app end-to-end. Although end-to-end tests nominally test use cases they indirectly check that your app is configured correctly, (that all the dependencies are wired, etc etc). Unit tests on the other hand should focus exclusively on the domain, and not on the context in which your code is deployed.

I also agree with NamshubWriter's answer. I'm am not against tests that check configuration as long as they are grouped in a separate test suite to your unit tests.

Answer 3

IMHO, you should not be testing that. The Google Guice guys have the unit tests to assert that the injections work as expected - after all, that's what Guice is designed to do. You should only be writing tests for your own code (A and B).

Answer 4

I don't think you should test private members being set. Better to test against the public interface of your class. If member "b" wouldn't be injected, you'll probably get a NullPointerException executing your tests, which should be plenty of warning.