How to use RetrieveGenericsForDefaultAnswers class of org.mockito.internal.stubbing.defaultanswers package

Your Java runtime version is from March 2014; plenty of bugs have been fixed in the VM ever since and you should really upgrade. I am 99% sure that this problem is related to type annotations (@NonNull) which were introduced in this version for the first time in this exact release. I am sure that your problem will go away if you upgrade your VM.

I can successfully execute your proposed test with a recent build of the HotSpot VM.

In 2016 you can use runner delegate with PowerMockito, effectively using two runners:

@RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)
@PowerMockRunnerDelegate(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)

More details here: https://github.com/jayway/powermock/wiki/JUnit_Delegating_Runner

ServletRequest, ServletResponse and FilterChain are all interfaces, so you can easily create test stubs for them, either by hand or using a mocking framework.

Make the mock objects configurable so that you can prepare a canned response to getRequestURI() and so that you can query the ServletResponse to assert that sendRedirect has been invoked.

Inject a mock ModeService.

Invoke doFilter passing the mock ServletRequest, ServletResponse and FilterChain as its parameters.

@Test
public void testSomethingAboutDoFilter() {
    MyFilter filterUnderTest = new MyFilter();
    filterUnderTest.setModeService(new MockModeService(ModeService.ONLINE));
    MockFilterChain mockChain = new MockFilterChain();
    MockServletRequest req = new MockServletRequest("/maintenance.jsp");
    MockServletResponse rsp = new MockServletResponse();

    filterUnderTest.doFilter(req, rsp, mockChain);

    assertEquals("/maintenance.jsp",rsp.getLastRedirect());
}

In practice you'll want to move the setup into an @Before setUp() method, and write more @Test methods to cover every possible execution path.

... and you'd probably use a mocking framework like JMock or Mockito to create mocks, rather than the hypothetical MockModeService etc. I've used here.

This is a unit testing approach, as opposed to an integration test. You are only exercising the unit under test (and the test code).

If you really don't have a choice for refactoring you can mock/stub everything in the super method call e.g.

    class BaseService {

        public void validate(){
            fail(" I must not be called");
        }

        public void save(){
            //Save method of super will still be called.
            validate();
        }
    }

    class ChildService extends BaseService{

        public void load(){}

        public void save(){
            super.save();
            load();
        }
    }

    @Test
    public void testSave() {
        ChildService classToTest = Mockito.spy(new ChildService());

        // Prevent/stub logic in super.save()
        Mockito.doNothing().when((BaseService)classToTest).validate();

        // When
        classToTest.save();

        // Then
        verify(classToTest).load();
    }

The problem with your unit-test is, that you are trying to mock a method of your actual class which you want to test but you can't actually invoke a mock method as this will return null unless you declare a mocked return value on that invoked method. Usually, you only mock external dependencies.

There are actually two ways to create test-objects: mock and spy. The primer one will create a new object based on the class you provided which has internal state null and also return null on every invoked method. That's why you need to define certain return values for method invocations. spy on the other hand creates a real object and intercepts method invocations if "mock definitions" are defined for certain methods.

Mockito and PowerMock provide two ways of defining your mocked methods:

// method 1
when(mockedObject.methodToMock(any(Param1.class), any(Param2.class),...)
    .thenReturn(answer);
when(mockedObject, method(Dependency.class, "methodToMock", Parameter1.class, Parameter2.class, ...)
    .thenReturn(answer);

or

// method 2
doReturn(answer).when(mockedObject).methodToMock(param1, param2);

The difference is, that the method 1 will execute the methods implementation while the later one won't. This is important if you deal with spy objects as you sometimes don't want to execute the real code inside the invoked method but instead just replace the code or return a predefined value!

Although Mockito and PowerMock provide a doCallRealMethod() which you can define instead of doReturn(...) or doThrow(...), this will invoke and execute the code within your real object and ignores any mocked method return statements. Though, this is not that useful in your case where you want to mock a method of your class under test.

A method implementation can be "overwritten" by

doAnswer(Answer<T>() { 
    @Override 
    public T answer(InvocationOnMock invocation) throws Throwable {
        ...
    }
)

where you simply can declare what the logic of the invoked method should be. You can utilize this to return the mock result of the protected method therefore like this:

import static org.hamcrest.core.IsSame.sameInstance;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.mock;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.spy;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.doReturn;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.doAnswer;
import static org.mockito.Matchers.any;
import static org.mockito.Matchers.anyString;

import java.io.InputStream;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.mockito.invocation.InvocationOnMock;
import org.mockito.stubbing.Answer;

public class FooKeyRetrieverTest {

    @Test
    public void testGetFooKey() throws Exception {
        // Arrange
        final FooKeyRetriever sut = spy(new FooKeyRetriever());
        FooKey mockedKey = mock(FooKey.class);

        doReturn(mockedKey)
            .when(sut).getKeyFromStream(any(InputStream.class), anyString());
        doAnswer(new Answer<FooKey>() {

            public FooKey answer(InvocationOnMock invocation) throws Throwable {
                return sut.getKeyFromStream(null, "");
            }
        }).when(sut).getKey(anyString());

        // Act
        FooKey ret = sut.getKey("test");

        // Assert
        assertThat(ret, sameInstance(mockedKey));
    }
}

The code above works, however note that this has the same semantic as simply declaring a return value for the getKey(...) as

doReturn(mockedKey).when(sut).getKey(anyString());

Trying to modify only getKeyFromStream(...) with something like this:

doReturn(mockedKey)
    .when(sut).getKeyFromStream(any(InputStream.class), anyString());

without modifying getKey(...) of your System-Under-Test (SUT) won't achieve anything as the real code of getKey(...) would be executed. If you however mock the sut-object, you could not invoke the method in your // Act section as this would return null. If you try

doCallRealMethod().when(sut).getKey(anyString());

on a mock object, the real method woulb be called and as mentiond beforehand, this would also invoke the real implementations of getKeyFromStream(...) and getKeyStream(...) regardless what you specified as mock-method.

As you probably can see by yourself, mocking methods of your actual class under test is not that useful and puts more burden to you than it provides any good. Therefore, it's up to you or your enterprise' policy if you want or need to test private/protected methods at all or if you stick to testing only the public API (which I would recommend). You also have the possibility to refactor your code in order to improve testability although the primary intent of refactoring should be to improve the overall design of your code.

As you noted, these kind of tests are pointless (unless you're writing a unit test for Mockito itself, of course :-)).

The point of mocking is to eliminate external dependencies so you can unit-test your code without depending on other classes' code. For example, let's assume you have a class that uses the Employee class you described:

public class EmployeeExaminer {
    public boolean isJim(Employee e, int i) {
        return "Jim".equals(e.getName(i));
    }
}

And you'd like to write a unit test for it. Of course, you could use the actual Employee class, but then your test won't be a unit-test any more - it would depend on Employee's implementation. Here's where mocking comes in handy - it allows you to replace Employee with a predictable behavior so you could write a stable unit test:

// The object under test
EmployeeExaminer ee = new EmployeeExaminer();

// A mock Employee used for tests:
Employee emp = mock(Employee.class);
when(emp.getName(1)).thenReturn("Jim");
when(emp.getName(2)).thenReturn("Mark");

// Assert EmployeeExaminer's behavior:
assertTrue(ee.isJim(emp, 1));
assertFalse(ee.isJim(emp, 2));

Yes, you are on the right track, putting a mock @Bean in a @Configuration class is one approach, and I'll describe my experience:

The trick is that you need to use a different set of .xml files purely for testing which exclude the live versions of those beans.

@ContextConfiguration(locations = {"context1-test.xml", "context2-test.xml", ...})

And the "-test-xml" files go in src/test/resources.

At least that was my experience in doing the same thing. Maybe there is some way to "override" the beans with the mock versions, but as yet I am not aware of it.

I also chose to put the mocks (I had 5 of them) all together in an own configuration:

@Configuration
public class MockServicesProvider {
     @Bean
     public AnotherBean myMock() { return mock(AnotherBean.class); }
}

Another interesting part of this problem is the common usage of initMocks(this); in the @Before method of your test class.

If the mocks are being used in other places (and they are, that's why you are wiring them up...) then initMocks(this) will blow them away between tests (not literally - just that new mocks will be created and any other mocks wired up in other objects will be "lost").

The solution to this was to call mockito's reset(mockObject) in the @Before method before each test. The same mocks are reset (all the when's and interactions), without creating new mocks.

Note that the Mockito docs for reset say very sternly that this method should not commonly be used, except in the context of mocks being applied via dependency injection, as we are indeed doing in this case :)

Have fun!

Further reading has led me to try using ArgumentCaptors and the following works, although much more verbose than I would like.

ArgumentCaptor<String> argument = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(String.class);

verify(errors, atLeastOnce()).add(argument.capture(), any(ActionMessage.class));

List<String> values = argument.getAllValues();

assertTrue(values.contains("exception.message"));
assertTrue(values.contains("exception.detail"));

I got this to work by doing this in the test:

CompletableFuture<Long> future = new CompletableFuture<>();
future.completeExceptionally(new Exception("HTTP call failed!"));

Mockito.when(mockClient.getSize())
        .thenReturn(future);

Not sure if this is the best way though.