Hi, I’m desperately trying to mock a superclass method but I can’t seem to find a way… :cry: I even ...

# mockk

[Matteo Mirk]

Hi, I’m desperately trying to mock a superclass method but I can’t seem to find a way… 😢
I even tried to use mockkConstructor() on the superclass and then stub with anyConstructed(), but it didn’t work.
Is this even possible to achieve with Mockk? The docs don’t say anything about this scenario.

[Mattia Tommasone]

uhm
is the method externally visible from the class you are mocking?

[Matteo Mirk]

yes, it’s a public method of the superclass, declared as open suspend fun . It’s overridden in the subclass and calls the super before doing other stuff. For this test I need to stub it, but can’t find a way.

[Mattia Tommasone]

uhm
are you saying you want to stub just the super() call and have the subclass function invoke the real function?ù

[Mattia Tommasone]

that smells a bit to me 😄

[Matteo Mirk]

Yeah I know, sadly it’s not my class, it was written like that, cannot refactor it at the moment. 😕 I have to deal with it as it is right now. Re-reading the docs now I noticed something: does anyConstructed() matches any available constructor? The docs say that if you have several you can use constructedWith(), but actually these classes have only 1 ctor (with 12 params, I know don’t tell me… 🤦‍♂️ ). So when I use anyConstructed<Superclass>() will it match? Currently it seems not because the super method is still executing

[Mattia Tommasone]

that is a good question i don’t have an answer for off the top of my head 😄
i.e., IDK if anyConstructed will match constructors being called when instantiating a superclass with super
I’m guessing it will, but it’s an educated guess

[Mattia Tommasone]

this being said, why don’t you stub the subclass method altogether?

[Matteo Mirk]

can’t stub it because it’s the object under test 😂 Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s really a hassle and we can’t find a solution right now. The only workaround a teammate found was to encapsulate che super call into a private method that can be stubbed like

coEvery { underTest["execute"](request) }

so that’s the route I’ll have to go down; in the near future we will get rid of inheritance using a decorator and this problem will disappear.
Big thanks anyway for the support Mattia! 🙌