generate javax.validation.ConstraintViolationException for unit test - spring-boot

Springboot: I got a mocked service and a method needs to return a javax.validation.ConstraintViolationException in order to properly unit test the caller class.
I cannot seem to find a way to generate a ConstraintViolationException or ConstraintViolation for that matter in Hibernate Validators.
Is there some solution I missing out?
Thank you

What do you want to achieve exactly?
Because you can create a ConstraintViolationException without any violations in it if you just need the exception.
If you want a violation in it (you just have to pass a set of violations to the constructor), I would say you have several possibilities:
You can simply implement ConstraintViolation as it's an interface and just put some code where you see fit.
Otherwise, I would trigger a real validation (with Validator.validate(myBean)) and get the violations from there.
You can use ConstraintViolationImpl#forBeanValidation() to forge a violation but it's an internal class so it might break in future versions of HV.

Related

java protobuf3 what is `buildPartial` used for?

As described in this document(https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/java/com/google/protobuf/Message.Builder.html#buildPartial--) Like MessageLite.Builder.build(), but does not throw an exception if the message is missing required fields. Instead, a partial message is returned
I guess that's a legacy API from proto2? since required keyword is removed in proto3, but they're not marking this API as deprecated, then in which case we should use this?
This allows to easily supply class instance to the unit test environment. Allowing to avoid complex mocking/class construction.

EasyMock aware debugger in Intellij?

Maybe this is counterproductive, I don't know, but right now I am in need of a debugger in IntelliJ that are aware of EasyMock mocks and especially what the mocks methods actually returns.
For example, I have a transport interface ITransport, which has some methods that had to be mocked, and where I only want some of methods returning something. E.g.
ITransport myTransport = createMock(ITransport.class);
I want myTransport.getID() to return a mocked ID 10.
expect(myTransport.getID()).andReturn(10);
With ID 10 I want a method to be invoked once,
expect(myTransport.publish(any(...)));
expectLastCall.once();
Something in the transport class breaks and myTransport isn't called, and my test fails. Know I just want to step through the code with the debugger to check why my test fails. So I add a breakpoint to verify the values of the mocked myTransport object. But they all say "null", even the ID. So I assume, with some brief investigation, that the cause of this is the EasyMock mock class, it doesn't really update the object with value (which sounds reasonable) and instead returns the mocked value at runtime when the method is called.
So, are there any mock aware debuggers for IntelliJ that lets me see which value the method will eventually return.
Yes, and before I receive responses saying that "The debugger is not required if you write unit tests for everything", I just want to state that I know about that. And this is legacy code, or at least code that wasn't written with testing in mind.
This may not be what you're looking for... but it feels like the problem is more on the debugging approach.
A mock object is really just that - a mock - meaning it's a fake empty object that doesn't do anything unless you specifically tell it. When your debugger inspects the mock object, it won't find any values that you did not specifically program it to return. It's not meant to hold values.
EasyMock has an argument capture feature, but since you just want it for debugging, this is probably the wrong approach. Mockito has a spying feature that could be suitable for what you want, but it would involve additional mock-programming statements.
I would say the easiest approach would be to implement your own ITransport just for use in your test class. That way you can implement getID() to always return 10 and put in an assert statement inside your publish(). And you can implement whatever other methods you need in order to capture additional data for debugging purposes. And you get to keep this test-only ITransport for either shared use or future debugging needs.
Indeed, the methods are mocked but the internal implementation of the class is left to itself.
Usually, you don't need to know what is returned since you're the one who recorded it in the first place.
You can also evaluate myTransport.getID() in your debugger. But doing this will consume the expectations.
However, it seems like a good idea to be able to list the all current pending expectations on a mock. And maybe to have a peek function. You can request such features on the EasyMock bug tracker: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/EASYMOCK

Where to implement cross-entity-validation?

I have a project where the data-model and business-layer are located in two different modules. Of course, the bussiness-module has a dependency to the model-module. The entity-validation is implemented through java-validation-api annotations.
I'm wondering where I should implement the cross-entity-validation (business validation, where the relations between different entity types are validated). Currently I see the follwing options:
Create custom javax.validation.ConstraintValidators and associated annotations. Problem is, that the validator would need access to the business-services, i.e. to retrieve related entities, but the model-module should not have a dependency to the business-module.
Implement cross-entity-validation in the business-services persist/merge-methods (i.e. by using interceptors). That would be possible, but the cross-entity-validation is seperated from the entity-validation and I would like to have only one place for validation.
Which option is preferable? Are there any better suggestions?
Thanks,
Sebastian
From the ideological point of view approach 1. is better. Bean Validation is working at the level of Model (in Model-View-Controller) and it is nothing wrong if Model part talks to database. So, for instance, you can create DAOs, which can be used both by service leayer and Model validators in order to avoid code duplication.
Interceptors are also good place to validate something, but you will not be able to use full power and automaticity of Bean Validation. Probably you will need to call validate method on your model objects by hand, throw ConstraintViolationException where needed, etc. Doable, but a little bit of work. In addition some validation probably will be left in Model, so, as you've pointed out, there would be more then one place, where validation is going on.
So I would move necessary DB code to separate layer and go with option 1.

TDD and mocking

First of all, I have to say, I'm new to mocking. So maybe I'm missing a point.
I'm also just starting to get used to the TDD approach.
So, in my actual project I'm working on a class in the business layer, while the data layer has yet to be deployed. I thought, this would be a good time to get started with mocking. I'm using Rhino Mocks, but I've come to the problem of needing to know the implementation details of a class before writing the class itself.
Rhino Mocks checks if alle the methods expected to be called are actually called. So I often need to know which mocked method is being called by the tested method first, even though they could be called in any order. Because of that I'm often writing complicated methods before I test them, because then I know already in which order the methods are being called.
simple example:
public void CreateAandB(bool arg1, bool arg2) {
if(arg1)
daoA.Create();
else throw new exception;
if(arg2)
daoB.Create();
else throw new exception;
}
if I want to test the error handling of this method, I'd have to know which method is being called first. But I don't want to be bugged about implementation details when writing the test first.
Am I missing something?
You have 2 choices. If the method should result in some change in your class the you can test the results of your method instead. So can you call CreateAandB(true,false) then then call some other method to see if the correct thing was created. In this situation your mock objects will probably be stubs which just provide some data.
If the doaA and doaB are objects which are injected into your class that actually create data in the DB or similar, which you can't verify the results of in the test, then you want to test the interaction with them, in which case you create the mocks and set the expectations, then call the method and verify that the expectations are met. In this situation your mock objects will be mocks and will verify the expected behaviour.
Yes you are testing implementation details, but your are testing the details of if your method is using its dependencies correctly, which is what you want to test, not how it is using them, which are the details you are not really interested in.
EDIT
IDao daoA = MockRepository.GenerateMock<IDao>(); //create mock
daoA.Expect(dao=>dao.Create); //set expectation
...
daoA.VerifyExpectations(); //check that the Create method was called
you can ensure that the expectations happen in a certain order, but not using the AAA syntax I believe (source from 2009, might have changed since,EDIT see here for an option which might work), but it seems someone has developed an approach which might allow this here. I've never used that and can't verify it.
As for needing to know which method was called first so you can verify the exception you have a couple of choices:
Have a different message in your exception and check that to determine which exception was raised.
Expect a call to daoA in addition to expecting the exception. If you don't get the call to daoA then the test fails as the exception must have been the first one.
Often times you just need fake objects, not mocks. Mock objects are meant to test component interaction, and often you can avoid this by querying the state of SUT directly. Most practical uses of mocks are to test interaction with some external system (DB, file system, webservice, etc.), and for other things you should be able to query system state directly.

NMock2.0 - how to stub a non interface call?

I have a class API which has full code coverage and uses DI to mock out all the logic in the main class function (Job.Run) which does all the work.
I found a bug in production where we werent doing some validation on one of the data input fields.
So, I added a stub function called ValidateFoo()... Wrote a unit test against this function to Expect a JobFailedException, ran the test - it failed obviously because that function was empty. I added the validation logic, and now the test passes.
Great, now we know the validation works. Problem is - how do I write the test to make sure that ValidateFoo() is actually called inside Job.Run()? ValidateFoo() is a private method of the Job class - so it's not an interface...
Is there anyway to do this with NMock2.0? I know TypeMock supports fakes of non interface types. But changing mock libs right now is not an option. At this point if NMock can't support it, I will simply just add the ValidateFoo() call to the Run() method and test things manually - which obviously I'd prefer not to do considering my Job.Run() method has 100% coverage right now. Any Advice? Thanks very much it is appreciated.
EDIT: the other option I have in mind is to just create an integration test for my Job.Run functionality (injecting to it true implementations of the composite objects instead of mocks). I will give it a bad input value for that field and then validate that the job failed. This works and covers my test - but it's not really a unit test but instead an integration test that tests one unit of functionality.... hmm..
EDIT2: IS there any way to do tihs? Anyone have ideas? Maybe TypeMock - or a better design?
The current version of NMock2 can mock concrete types (I don't remember exactly which version they added this, but we're using version 2.1) using the mostly familiar syntax:
Job job = mockery.NewMock<Job>(MockStyle.Transparent);
Stub.On(job).Method("ValidateFoo").Will(Return.Value(true));
MockStyle.Transparent specifies that anything you don't stub or expect should be handled by the underlying implementation - so you can stub and set expectations for methods on an instance you're testing.
However, you can only stub and set expectations on public methods (and properties), which must also be virtual or abstract. So to avoid relying on integration testing, you have two options:
Make Job.ValidateFoo() public and virtual.
Extract the validation logic into a new class and inject an instance into Job.
Since all private are all called by public methods (unless relying on reflection runtime execution), then those privates are being executed by public methods. Those private methods are causing changes to the object beyond simply executing code, such as setting class fields or calling into other objects. I'd find a way to get at those "results" of calling the private method. (Or mocking the things that shouldn't be executed in the private methods.)
I can't see the class under test. Another problem that could be pushing you to want access to the private methods is that it's a super big class with a boatload of private functionality. These classes may need to be broken down into smaller classes, and some of those privates may turn into simpler publics.

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