Mocking and Patching Pitfalls

Speaker

Edwin Jung

Material

video

Note

Mock hell

1. complex patch targets
2. numerous mocks or patches
3. mocks with brittle assertions
4. mocks with complex setup
5. deep mocks/recursive mocks/mocks returning mocks
6. tests that test nothing
7. using the debugger to reverse-engineer mocks
8. mocks that prevent refactoring

How to test without mock

• mocks aren't stubs

• test doubles

name	behavior
mock	records calls to the object
stub	returns canned data, no logic
fake	implements fake version of production logic
dummy	does nothing
spy	records and delegates to the real thing

• alternatives
  • fake patch
  • fake injection

• tactical questions

  1. Which test doubles (mock or other)?
  2. Mockist or classical?
  3. Patch or inject?

• tactics

  1. Find a Seam, Patch a Fake
  2. mock roles not objects
  3. Dependency Injection
  4. Inject the Collaborator
  5. Go Functional

Conclusion

• always be refactoring
• consider other test doubles
• patching should be rare, and the last tool you use
• mocks (if you use them)
  • should target roles and not objects
  • are not just for test isolation

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