Mockito: Inject real objects into private @Autowired fields

Question

I'm using Mockito's @Mock and @InjectMocks annotations to inject dependencies into private fields which are annotated with Spring's @Autowired :

@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class DemoTest {
    @Mock
    private SomeService service;

    @InjectMocks
    private Demo demo;

    /* ... */
}

and

public class Demo {

    @Autowired
    private SomeService service;

    /* ... */
}

Now I would like to also inject real objects into private @Autowired fields (without setters). Is this possible or is the mechanism limited to injecting Mocks only?

Answer 1

Use @Spy annotation

@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class DemoTest {
    @Spy
    private SomeService service = new RealServiceImpl();

    @InjectMocks
    private Demo demo;

    /* ... */
}

Mockito will consider all fields having @Mock or @Spy annotation as potential candidates to be injected into the instance annotated with @InjectMocks annotation. In the above case 'RealServiceImpl' instance will get injected into the 'demo'

For more details refer

Mockito-home

@Spy

@Mock

Answer 2

In Addition to @Dev Blanked answer, if you want to use an existing bean that was created by Spring the code can be modified to:

@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class DemoTest {

    @Inject
    private ApplicationContext ctx;

    @Spy
    private SomeService service;

    @InjectMocks
    private Demo demo;

    @Before
    public void setUp(){
        service = ctx.getBean(SomeService.class);
    }

    /* ... */
}

This way you don't need to change your code (add another constructor) just to make the tests work.

Answer 3

Mockito is not a DI framework and even DI frameworks encourage constructor injections over field injections.
So you just declare a constructor to set dependencies of the class under test :

@Mock
private SomeService serviceMock;

private Demo demo;

/* ... */
@BeforeEach
public void beforeEach(){
   demo = new Demo(serviceMock);
}

Using Mockito spy for the general case is a terrible advise. It makes the test class brittle, not straight and error prone : What is really mocked ? What is really tested ?
@InjectMocks and @Spy also hurts the overall design since it encourages bloated classes and mixed responsibilities in the classes.
Please read the spy() javadoc before using that blindly (emphasis is not mine) :

Creates a spy of the real object. The spy calls real methods unless they are stubbed. Real spies should be used carefully and occasionally , for example when dealing with legacy code.

As usual you are going to read the partial mock warning : Object oriented programming tackles complexity by dividing the complexity into separate, specific, SRPy objects. How does partial mock fit into this paradigm? Well, it just doesn't... Partial mock usually means that the complexity has been moved to a different method on the same object. In most cases, this is not the way you want to design your application.

However, there are rare cases when partial mocks come handy: dealing with code you cannot change easily (3rd party interfaces, interim refactoring of legacy code etc.) However, I wouldn't use partial mocks for new, test-driven & well-designed code.

Answer 4

In Spring there is a dedicated utility called ReflectionTestUtils for this purpose. Take the specific instance and inject into the the field.

@Spy
..
@Mock
..

@InjectMock
Foo foo;

@BeforeEach
void _before(){
   ReflectionTestUtils.setField(foo,"bar", new BarImpl());// `bar` is private field
}

Answer 5

I know this is an old question, but we were faced with the same problem when trying to inject Strings. So we invented a JUnit5/Mockito extension that does exactly what you want: https://github.com/exabrial/mockito-object-injection

EDIT:

@InjectionMap
 private Map<String, Object> injectionMap = new HashMap<>();

 @BeforeEach
 public void beforeEach() throws Exception {
  injectionMap.put("securityEnabled", Boolean.TRUE);
 }

 @AfterEach
 public void afterEach() throws Exception {
  injectionMap.clear();
 }