Mock Mock Mock

Mocking is serious business for evolved coding monkeys these days. There are few good frameworks which help in mocking like easymock, jMockit, mockrunner etc

PowerMock
SmartGWT is a GWT widget library which has design issues as its classes doesnt mostly implement interfaces. But the problem is we have to use it as it has nice widgets.

Question: how do we unit test these classes which have native code and hard to mock?
 Powermock came to rescue us. It can re-engineer the class and supress static block and method.
Eg:
@RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)
@PrepareForTest( {Appender.class})
@SuppressStaticInitializationFor({"com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.UIObject","com.smartgwt.client.widgets.BaseWidget"})
@MockPolicy({Slf4jMockPolicy.class, Log4jMockPolicy.class})
public class MyStaticTest{
}
The above supresses static blocks which have wierd native calls and helps us continue our junit as usual. But its a bit slow (worth it i believe).
More on usage here

jMock vs. EasyMock

Comparison of jmock & easy mock

Both have similar features. jMock has a DSL (domain specific language) while easy mock has record-replay style.

Apparently jMock seems to be better in terms of readability and usability. Would prefer the more intuitive framework like jMock than Easy mock.

Will post more when I actually try using jMock. Till than easy mock.

Useful links
1. EasyMock http://www.easymock.org
2. JMock  http://www.jmock.org
3. Mackinnon, T., et al. 2000. Endo-Testing: Unit Testing with Mock Objects. In Proceedings of XP 2000. http://www.mockobjects.com/files/endotesting.pdf
4. Freeman, S., et al. 2004. Mock Roles, not Objects. In Proceedings of OOPLSA 2004. http://www.mockobjects.com/files/mockrolesnotobjects.pdf
5. Walls, C. 2008. Spring in Action, 2nd Edition. Manning Publications Co., Greenwich, CT. §B.2.1.
6. Stewart, S. 2004. Approaches to Mocking. http://www.onjava.com/lpt/a/4526
7. Fowler, M. 2007. Mocks Aren't Stubs. http://martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html