OCMock - How to expect the content of an nsarray

Question

I want to test that the values i insert in a database are sent back to the delegate of my class.

I tried to mock the delegate and expect the array i used to populate the database. It fails because the 2 NSArray have the same content but are different objects.

I've tried implementing isequal and hash methods on my model whithout success.

Here is the error log :

'OCMockObject[NewsListViewController]: unexpected method invoked: service:<RSSService-0x4c25b90-324400011.636966: 0x4c25b90> didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:(
    description102362,
    description102362,
    description102362,
    description102362,
    description102362
) 
    expected:   service:<OCMAnyConstraint: 0x4c10f30> didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:(
    description102362,
    description102362,
    description102362,
    description102362,
    description102362
)'

How can i do that ?

Here is my test :

- (void) testServiceShouldNotLoadArticlesFromRSSFeedIfArticlesInDatabase {
    NSArray *fakeArticles = [TestUtils createArticles:5];
    [[DatabaseManager sharedManager] saveArticles:fakeArticles];

    RSSService *mockService = [OCMockObject partialMockForObject:service];
    id mockDelegate = [OCMockObject mockForClass:NewsListViewController.class];
    [[mockDelegate expect] service:[OCMArg any] didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:fakeArticles];
    mockService.delegate = mockDelegate;

    [mockService loadAllArticles];
    [mockService verify];
    [mockDelegate verify];
}

and here is the method i'm testing :

- (void) loadAllArticles {
    NSArray *articles = [self articlesFromDatabase];
    [self.delegate service:self didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:articles];
}

Thanks for your help, Vincent

Answer 1

Get OCHamcrest! It provides a bunch of matchers that work with OCMock and make for much cleaner tests. Here's what your expectation would look like:

[[mockDelegate expect] service:[OCMArg any] didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:contains(article1, article2, article3, article4, article5, nil)];
// or, if order is unpredictable
[[mockDelegate expect] service:[OCMArg any] didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:containsInAnyOrder(article1, article2, article3, article4, article5, nil)];

If you really don't want to use hamcrest for some reason, you can create a method in your test class that evaluates the articles array. But I think it's kind of ugly:

- (void) testServiceShouldNotLoadArticlesFromRSSFeedIfArticlesInDatabase {
    NSArray *fakeArticles = [TestUtils createArticles:5];
    [[DatabaseManager sharedManager] saveArticles:fakeArticles];

    RSSService *mockService = [OCMockObject partialMockForObject:service];
    id mockDelegate = [OCMockObject mockForClass:NewsListViewController.class];
    [[[mockDelegate stub] andCall:@selector(service:verifyFiveArticles:) onObject:self] service:[OCMArg any] didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:[OCMArg any]];
    mockService.delegate = mockDelegate;

    [mockService loadAllArticles];
    [mockService verify];
    [mockDelegate verify];
}

-(void)service:(id)service verifyFiveArticles:(NSArray *)articles {
    STAssertEquals(5, [articles count]);
}

Answer 2

Is it possible that the two arrays have the same content but different addresses? Maybe trying comparing with isEqualToArray

[[mockDelegate expect] service:[OCMArg any]
  didFinishParsingRSSWithItems:[OCMArg checkWithSelector:@selector(isEqualToArray:)
                                                onObject:expectedArray]]