Hello folks! I have just started tinkering with

kotest

and I am happy with it thus far, except for one little thing that I cannot wrap my head around.

class DummySpec : FreeSpec(
    {
        val mockedBeeper = mockk<Beeper>()

        beforeTest {
            clearAllMocks()
            println("mock cleared")
        }

        "beeper will beep" - {
            "when the stars have aligned" - {
                every { mockedBeeper.beep(any()) } returns "mocked beep"
                "and the moon is high" {
                    mockedBeeper.beep(true) shouldBe "mocked beep"
                }
            }
        }
    },
)

class Beeper {
    fun beep(shouldBeep: Boolean): String = if (shouldBeep) {
        "BEEP"
    } else "shhhhh"
}

this will clear the

mock

three times, once for each line in the test spec. Is there anyway to use

beforeTest

but limit it to be executed only for the top test method? Thanks!

Take a look at IsolationModes

I have, doesn't do what I want

Maybe

beforeContainer

or

beforeSpec

?

beforeSpec is too coarse grained, beforeContainer behaves in the same way 😞

Yes. Could you give more details in your use case? What is your test flow, what are you trying to accomplish?

basically

mockk

is complaining because

"and the moon is high"

runs

beforeTest

again and splats the mocked object setup

you can use

clearMockks(answer = false)

, but in general I agree that it seems to me there is something wrong with your setup

@thanksforallthefish thanks, wrong in what sense though?

to me it looks weird you want to clean up stuff before the first test only, it (probably) means somewhere else you have a test that leaves things behind. I think before should be for setup, and after for general verifications and clean up, so seeing a clean up before a test is always weird

hmm perhaps I am not explaining properly..

something like

class DummySpec : FreeSpec(
    {
        val mockedBeeper = mockk<Beeper>()

        "beeper will beep" - {
            clearAllMocks()
            println("mock cleared")
            "when the stars have aligned" - {
                every { mockedBeeper.beep(any()) } returns "mocked beep"
                "and the moon is high" {
                    mockedBeeper.beep(true) shouldBe "mocked beep"
                }
            }
        }
    },
)

class Beeper {
    fun beep(shouldBeep: Boolean): String = if (shouldBeep) {
        "BEEP"
    } else "shhhhh"
}

also clears only once, but ofc does not scale if you have many top level “tests” in your spec. maybe you should really look at isolation, there might something there. I never fully understood it and felt it opens up for bad practices (somehow we have many many tests all works with default isolation, but we are also not using “crazy” set ups and prefer duplicating stuff in tests to keep them simple)

That was one of my considerations, thanks Marco.