Everybody has a different opinion on whether you should write unit tests for private methods, and my own is that you should, unless said methods are very small procedures called by some public function, in which case you can treat the whole package as a black box.
Unfortunately, several classes contain code that is completely irrelevant to users of the class, or code that should never be called directly if not from within the class itself (because you’re proxying calls to control accesses to the class, or keeping stats, or demultiplexing calls from several classes, or whatever). The purpose of unit-testing is to help maintain the code, and to help spotting bugs more quickly; it shouldn’t become self-referential and it definitely should not change the way you structure your classes, just for the sake of testability. Hence, private methods should be used whenever you don’t want to expose the internal workings of a class to outsiders, but at the same time they shouldn’t be left behind when writing tests, or they quickly become a source of subtle errors.
I like PowerMock‘s mockPrivate feature, and I use it a lot, but what I want to do here is to actually test the private method, not replace it with a mock! (I know it should be obvious, but when using powermock very often you start to think of it as the solution to all your problems)
Reflection comes in handy: you set methods accessibility flag to true and you can call them! You can also change the value of private fields, or call private constructors. I mostly use these 3 functions, so I came up with a simple class that I use in all my Java JUnit-driven projects.
In the spirit of my previous post on some of my favorite Java utility methods, I’ll post here this class, hoping that some of you may find it useful:
/**
* ReflectionUtils.java
* Created on Apr 30, 2012
* Copyright 2012 mb
* <https://somethingididnotknow.wordpress.com>
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
* the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
* Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
* version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
* ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
* FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
* details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
* this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51
* Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
*/
import java.lang.reflect.Constructor;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.util.Arrays;
/**
* Some utility methods that can be used for unit tests to alter internal
* objects states by exploiting features from <tt>java.lang.reflect</tt>
* package.
*
* @author mb
*/
public class ReflectionUtils {
/**
* Sets the value of the <tt>static</tt> field named <tt>fieldName</tt> in
* class <tt>clazz</tt> to <tt>newValue</tt> and returns <code>true</code>
* if the operation was successful.
*
* @param clazz
* the class whose field is to be changed
* @param fieldName
* the (case-sensitive) name of the field whose content is to be
* changed
* @param newValue
* the new value that the field should store
* @return <code>true</code> if the new value has been set,
* <code>false</code> otherwise
*/
public static boolean changeStaticField(Class<?> clazz, String fieldName,
Object newValue) {
if (clazz == null)
return false;
return change(clazz, null, fieldName, newValue);
}
private static boolean change(Class<?> clazz, Object object,
String fieldName, Object newValue) {
boolean success = false;
try {
Field toChange = clazz.getDeclaredField(fieldName);
toChange.setAccessible(true);
toChange.set(object, newValue);
success = true;
} catch (NoSuchFieldException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (SecurityException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return success;
}
private static Object call(Class<?> clazz, Object object,
String methodName, Object... args) throws IllegalArgumentException,
InvocationTargetException {
Method[] allMethods = clazz.getDeclaredMethods();
for (Method m : allMethods) {
// cycling through all methods, as we don't want users to specify
// the list of argument types, we rely on the compiler
if (m.getName().equals(methodName)) {
m.setAccessible(true);
try {
Object result = m.invoke(object, args);
return result;
} catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
}
}
}
throw new IllegalArgumentException(
String.format(
"No matching method has been found for method named %s and parameters %s",
methodName, Arrays.toString(args)));
}
/**
* Invokes the method called <tt>methodName</tt> on <tt>object</tt> passing
* the provided arguments to it, returning the result if the invocation was
* successful, throwing an {@link IllegalArgumentException} otherwise.
*
* @param object
* the object onto which the method is to be invoked
* @param methodName
* the (case-sensitive) name of the method to be called
* @param args
* the arguments to be passed to the method
* @return the value returned by the method
* @throws IllegalArgumentException
* in case a method called <tt>methodName</tt> accepting the
* provided list of arguments is not found, or <tt>object</tt>
* is <code>null</code>
* @throws InvocationTargetException
* in case the method threw an exception (that can be retrieved
* calling {@link InvocationTargetException#getCause()} on the
* caught exception)
*/
public static Object callMethod(Object object, String methodName,
Object... args) throws IllegalArgumentException,
InvocationTargetException {
if (object == null || methodName == null)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("null object or method name");
return call(object.getClass(), object, methodName, args);
}
/**
* Invokes the method called <tt>methodName</tt> of class <tt>clazz</tt>
* passing the provided arguments to it, returning the result if the
* invocation was successful, throwing an {@link IllegalArgumentException}
* otherwise.
*
* @param clazz
* the class whose method is to be invoked
* @param methodName
* the (case-sensitive) name of the method to be called
* @param args
* the arguments to be passed to the method
* @return the value returned by the method
* @throws IllegalArgumentException
* in case a method called <tt>methodName</tt> accepting the
* provided list of arguments is not found, or <tt>object</tt>
* is <code>null</code>
* @throws InvocationTargetException
* in case the method threw an exception (that can be retrieved
* calling {@link InvocationTargetException#getCause()} on the
* caught exception)
*/
public static Object callStaticMethod(Class<?> clazz, String methodName,
Object... args) throws IllegalArgumentException,
InvocationTargetException {
if (clazz == null || methodName == null)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("null class or method name");
return call(clazz, null, methodName, args);
}
/**
* Sets the value of the field named <tt>fieldName</tt> for object
* <tt>object</tt> to <tt>newValue</tt> and returns <code>true</code> if the
* operation was successful.
*
* @param object
* the object whose field is to be changed
* @param fieldName
* the (case-sensitive) name of the field whose content is to be
* changed
* @param newValue
* the new value that the field should store
* @return <code>true</code> if the new value has been set,
* <code>false</code> otherwise
*/
public static boolean changeField(Object object, String fieldName,
Object newValue) {
if (object == null)
return false;
return change(object.getClass(), object, fieldName, newValue);
}
/**
* Creates a new object of type <tt>T</tt> by calling a constructor of class
* <tt>clazz</tt> accepting the provided list of <tt>args</tt>.
*
* @param <T>
* the type of the object to be created
* @param clazz
* the class of the object to be created (remember, it's
* <tt>Class<T></tt>)
* @param args
* the arguments to feed the constructor with
* @return the created object or <code>null</code> if anything goes wrong
* @throws InvocationTargetException
* in case the matching constructor throws an <tt>Exception</tt>
* (that can be retrieved calling
* {@link InvocationTargetException#getCause()} on the caught
* exception) when called
*/
public static <T> T createNew(Class<T> clazz, Object... args)
throws InvocationTargetException {
if (clazz == null)
return null;
Constructor<?>[] allConstructors = clazz.getDeclaredConstructors();
for (Constructor<?> c : allConstructors) {
// cycling through all constructors, as we don't want users to
// specify
// the list of argument types, we rely on the compiler
c.setAccessible(true);
try {
Object result = c.newInstance(args);
return clazz.cast(result);
} catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
} catch (InstantiationException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
throw new IllegalArgumentException(
String.format(
"No matching constructor has been found for class %s and parameters %s",
clazz, Arrays.toString(args)));
}
}
This is the same class on pastebin, I think it’s more readable there.
The weird for loop in call() and createNew() is there because I don’t want to specify the type of every argument to be passed along to methods or constructors, so I can’t use getDeclaredMethod() or getDeclaredConstructor(). This is testing code, so usability should be favored over performance, I guess…
something I did not know 
Have you seen dp4j? I think it does exactly what you want – test the private method.
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well, now I’ve seen it but.. I don’t need it 🙂
Maybe other users will!
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