The test failure message for mockito verify - mockito

Question

For a parameter class
class Criteria {
private Map params;
public getMap(){ return params; }
}
and a service method accept this criteria
class Service{
public List<Person> query(Criteria criteria){ ... }
}
A custom featureMatcher is used to match the criteria key
private Matcher<Criteria> hasCriteria(final String key, final Matcher<?> valueMatcher){
return new FeatureMatcher<Criteria, Object>((Matcher<? super Object>)valueMatcher, key, key){
#Override protected Object featureValueOf(Criteria actual){
return actual.getMap().get(key);
}
}
}
when using mockito to veryify the arguments:
verify(Service).query((Criteria) argThat("id", hasCriteria("id", equalTo(new Long(12)))));
The error message shows that:
Argument(s) are different! Wanted:
Service.query(
id <12L>
);
-> at app.TestTarget.test_id (TestTarget.java:134)
Actual invocation has different arguments:
Service.query(
app.Criteria#509f5011
);
If I use ArugmentCaptor,
ArgumentCaptor<Criteria> argument = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(Criteria.class);
verify(Service).query(argument.capture());
assertThat(argument.getValue(), hasCriteria("id", equalTo(new Long(12))));
The message is much better:
Expected: id <12L> but id was <2L>
How can I get such message, without using ArgumentCaptor?

Answer 1

The short answer is to adjust the Criteria code, if it's under your control, to write a better toString method. Otherwise, you may be better off using the ArgumentCaptor method.
Why is it hard to do without ArgumentCaptor? You know you're expecting one call, but Mockito was designed to handle it even if you have a dozen similar calls to evaluate. Even though you're using the same matcher implementation, with the same helpful describeMismatch implementation, assertThat inherently tries once to match where verify sees a mismatch and keeps trying to match any other call.
Consider this:
// in code:
dependency.call(true, false);
dependency.call(false, true);
dependency.call(false, false);
// in test:
verify(mockDependency).call(
argThat(is(equalTo(true))),
argThat(is(equalTo(true))));
Here, Mockito wouldn't know which of the calls was supposed to be call(true, true); any of the three might have been it. Instead, it only knows that there was a verification you were expecting that was never satisfied, and that one of three related calls might have been close. In your code with ArgumentCaptor, you can use your knowledge that there's only one call, and provide a more-sane error message; for Mockito, the best it can do is to output all the calls it DID receive, and without a helpful toString output for your Criteria, that's not very helpful at all.