EasyMock expectations with void methods

java unit-testing easymock
Sotirios Delimanolis picture Sotirios Delimanolis · Dec 17, 2012 · Viewed 63k times · Source

I'm using EasyMock to do some unit tests and I don't understand the usage of EasyMock.expectLastCall(). As you can see in my code below, I have an object with a method that returns void getting called in some other object's method. I would think that I have to make EasyMock expect that method call, but I tried commenting out the expectLastCall() invocation and it still works. Is it because I passed EasyMock.anyObject()) that it registered it as an expected call or is there something else going on? 

MyObject obj = EasyMock.createMock(MyObject.class);
MySomething something = EasyMock.createMock(MySomething.class);
EasyMock.expect(obj.methodThatReturnsSomething()).andReturn(something);

obj.methodThatReturnsVoid(EasyMock.<String>anyObject());

// whether I comment this out or not, it works
EasyMock.expectLastCall();

EasyMock.replay(obj);

// This method calls the obj.methodThatReturnsVoid()
someOtherObject.method(obj);

The API doc for EasyMock says this about expectLastCall(): 

Returns the expectation setter for the last expected invocation in the current thread. This method is used for expected invocations on void methods.

Answer

Yogendra Singh picture Yogendra Singh · Dec 17, 2012

This method returns you the handle of expectation through IExpectationSetters; which gives you ability to validate(assert) that your void method was called or not and related behaviors e.g.

EasyMock.expectLastCall().once();
EasyMock.expectLastCall().atLeastOnce();
EasyMock.expectLastCall().anyTimes();

Detailed API of the IExpectationSetters is here.

In your example you are just getting the handle and not doing anything with it hence you don't see any impact of having or removing the statement. It's very same as you call some getter method or declare some variable and don't use it.

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