Introduction

I love Kotlin and MVVM. When I began writing the application with it here at 1mg, I instantly went, “Wow”! It’s clean, it’s easy to read (sometimes 😁) and helps you write better code.

However, while writing tests, I encountered certain problems.

In this article, let us resolve some of the common issues that can be faced during mocking and unit testing our features.

Mockito Troubles: the Right Dependencies

1) In Kotlin

org.mockito.exceptions.base.MockitoException:
 Cannot mock/spy class com.example.authentication.login.LoginRepository
 Mockito cannot mock/spy because :
 — final class

Reason -

When Mockito mocks an object it extends the requested class to create an instance.

However, all classes in Kotlin are final by default. The rule: “closed for modifications, open for extension” is baked into the language.

So they can’t be extended.

Solution -

Either Replace your mockito-core gradle with the following:

testImplementation 'org.mockito:mockito-inline:latestVersion'

It is the configuration to make Mockito work with final classes.

Or

Use the Mockito extension mechanism by creating the file org.mockito.plugins.MockMaker in your test folder -

test/resources/mockito-extensions/org.mockito.plugins.MockMaker

Write this line in the file -

mock-maker-inline

2) Another problem was of AndroidSchedulers -

java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError at io.reactivex.android.schedulers.AndroidSchedulers$1.call(AndroidSchedulers.java:35)

at io.reactivex.android.schedulers.AndroidSchedulers$1.call(AndroidSchedulers.java:33)

at io.reactivex.android.plugins.RxAndroidPlugins.callRequireNonNull(RxAndroidPlugins.java:70)

at io.reactivex.android.plugins.RxAndroidPlugins.initMainThreadScheduler(RxAndroidPlugins.java:40)

at io.reactivex.android.schedulers.AndroidSchedulers.<clinit>(AndroidSchedulers.java:32)

Reason -

Default Scheduler returned by AndroidSchedulers.mainThread() is an instance of HandlerScheduler which relies on Android dependencies which are not available to be instantiated on the JVM.

However, we want to override the default AndroidSchedulers.mainThread() scheduler and return an instance which does not have these Android dependencies and can be safely instantiated.

Solution -

Use RxAndroid’s RxAndroidPlugins class which provides some hooks for overriding RxAndroid’s schedulers.

@Before
public static void setup() {
    RxAndroidPlugins.setInitMainThreadSchedulerHandler(
        __ -> Schedulers.trampoline());
}

3) Error while mocking Repository

private var loginRepository = mock<LoginRepository>()

After running the test, I saw the test failed as the actual repository was getting called.

Reason -

Here you can see, I am initializing the repository inside the ViewModel class, which means when I initialize my ViewModel class in Test,

those mock repositories will get replaced with the actual implementation.

class LoginViewModel : ViewModel() {
    private val loginRepository: LoginRepository = LoginRepository()
    private val truecallerRepository: TruecallerRepository = TruecallerRepository()
    //other logic
    }

Solution -

Pass these repositories from Factory to the ViewModel, you will always get the same instance you want to get invoked.

ViewModelFactory: It’s a class that implements ViewModelProvider.Factory and it will create the ViewModel from a parameter .class.

class LoginViewModelFactory constructor() : ViewModelProvider.Factory {


    @Suppress("UNCHECKED_CAST")
    override fun <T : ViewModel?> create(modelClass: Class<T>): T {
        if (modelClass != LoginViewModel::class.java) {
            throw IllegalArgumentException("Wrong Arguments")
        }
        val loginRepository = LoginRepository()
        val truecallerRepository = TruecallerRepository()
        return LoginViewModel(loginRepository, truecallerRepository) as T
    }
}

In your ViewModel -

class LoginViewModel(private val loginRepository: LoginRepository,
                     private val truecallerRepository: TruecallerRepository) : ViewModel() {
// other logic
}

In Fragment or Activity -

val loginViewModel = ViewModelProviders.of(this, this.viewModeFactory).get(MyViewModel::class.java)

4) Error while mocking LiveData Observers -

private val mockObserver = mock<Observer<AuthenticationState>>

Solution -

When testing LiveData, InstantTaskExecutorRule is needed in addition to RxImmediateSchedulerRule if the class being tested has both background thread and LiveData.

Use this with RxImmediateSchedulerRule -

@Rule
@JvmField
var instantExecutorRule = InstantTaskExecutorRule()

That’s all from my learnings!!