Spring Data Mock

This is a fairly flexible, versatile framework for mocking Spring Data repositories. Spring Data provides a very good foundation for separating the concerns of managing a database and its subsequently resulting queries from those of the business layer.

This is great for writing services. They only need to depend upon Spring Data repositories and manage their data through this level of indirection. This, however, means that for testing purposes, you will either have to write lots of boilerplate code for your Spring powered application, or you will have to start up a full blown application context with a backing database.

For most test cases, this is entirely unnecessary and, moreover, creates time burdens and takes away valuable time from productive tasks. This is why I decided to write this framework: to avoid the unnecessary effort, and to have a reliable infrastructure replicating what Spring would do with an actual database, only in-memory. This will allow for mocking the repository with actual data. Thus, you can test your services without having to start up the application context, and with the highest level of isolation -- with actual data.

Downloading

You can either clone this project and start using it:

$ git clone https://github.com/mmnaseri/spring-data-mock.git

or you can add a maven dependency since it is now available in Maven central:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.mmnaseri.utils</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-mock</artifactId>
    <version>${spring-data-mock.version}</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Note on Dependencies

Spring Data Mock depends on Apache Commons Logging to log all the interactions with the framework. If you need to, you can exclude this dependency from the framework by using Maven exclusions:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.mmnaseri.utils</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-data-mock</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-data-mock.version}</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
        <exclusions>
            <exclusion>
                <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
                <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
            </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
    </dependency>

Quick Start

Regardless of how you add the necessary dependency to your project, mocking a repository can be as simple as:

final UserRepository repository = builder().mock(UserRepository.class);

where builder() is a static method of the RepositoryFactoryBuilder class under package com.mmnaseri.utils.spring.data.dsl.factory.

Example:

import com.mmnaseri.utils.spring.data.dsl.factory.RepositoryFactoryBuilder;

public class CustomerRepositoryTest {

    @Test
    public void testDemo() {

        final CustomerRepository repository = RepositoryFactoryBuilder.builder().mock(CustomerRepository.class);
        repository.save(new Customer());

An alternate way of mocking a repository would be by using the RepositoryMockBuilder class under the com.mmnaseri.utils.spring.data.dsl.mock package:

final RepositoryFactoryConfiguration configuration = ... ;
final UserRepository repository = new RepositoryMockBuilder().useConfiguration(configuration).mock(UserRepository.class);

Documentation

For a complete documentation check out the website.

There you can get more information on how to download the framework, as well as how you can incorporate it in your project to have hassle-free data store mocking capabilities added to your shiny applications.

History

1.1 Add QueryDSL and findByExample support

see site changelog

FAQ

Why did you write this?

I was testing some pretty complicated services that relied on Spring Data to provide data. It was a lot of hassle to keep the test environment up-to-date with the test requirements as well as the real world situation. Also, it was pretty darn slow to run the tests, given database connection latency and all. I wanted to be able to isolate my services and test them regardless of the database features. To make it short, I wrote this framework to be able to separate integration/acceptance tests and unit tests.

Why did you make this open source?

Because everything I use (or nearly so) in my line of work is open source. It was time I gave something back. Also, the people behind Spring rock. I felt like I was selling tickets to the concert of rockstars by releasing this.

What is the main design decision behind this framework?

Make you do as little as possible.

When should I use this?

You should only use this to write you unit tests. For anything else, you would want the whole application to come alive and work. Using mocks for that is a bad idea.

This is going to be used at the level of code testing. Is it really well written?

It is. According to Cobertura, it has 100% code coverage, and according to Codacy, it has 0 code issues. It is maintained by myself the best I can. The rest is up to you.

Some Numbers and Facts

This project has 1000+ individual unit tests.
This project has 100% code coverage
This project has 95% branch coverage rate.
The project issue response turn around is an average of 2 days.
It covers all the repository specifications in Spring Data Commons (except predicates -- support is planned).
It has more than 6k lines of code, a lot of which is unit tests.
Every public class or method has JavaDoc
There is a dedicated documentation website for this project at https://mmnaseri.github.io/spring-data-mock/

Contribution

Since this project is aimed at the testing phase of your code, it is paramount that it is written with the best of qualities and that it maintains the highest standard.

Contributors are more than welcome. In fact, I flag most of the issues I receive as help wanted and there are really generous people out there who do take care of some issues.

If you see a piece of code that you don't like for whatever reason -- so long as that reason can be backed by pioneers and standards -- feel free to dig in and change the code to your heart's content and create a pull request.

Donation

This software is written without any expectations. I developed this originally to solve a business need at the company I was working at at the time, and then rewrote it for the purpose of open-sourcing it.

After it received some attention, I decided that I should sit down and redo it.

That is why I did a marathon development on it, and got it to a point where I could say it was safe for public use.

It still has a lot of room for improvement and enhancements. Even though I will continue to develop and maintain this framework, receiving donations would make it feel so much more real.

If you feel generous and want to buy me a cup of coffee, you can use my PayPal link: https://paypal.me/mmnaseri

Thank you in advance if you choose to donate! And if not, I hope you have some time to explore this framework and give me feedback so that I can make it better.

iamchrisb/spring-data-mock