What is the difference between mocking and spying when using Mockito? Ask Question

Difference between a Spy and a Mock

When Mockito creates a mock – it does so from the Class of a Type, not from an actual instance. The mock simply creates a bare-bones shell instance of the Class, entirely instrumented to track interactions with it. On the other hand, the spy will wrap an existing instance. It will still behave in the same way as the normal instance – the only difference is that it will also be instrumented to track all the interactions with it.

In the following example – we create a mock of the ArrayList class:

@Test
public void whenCreateMock_thenCreated() {
    List mockedList = Mockito.mock(ArrayList.class);

    mockedList.add("one");
    Mockito.verify(mockedList).add("one");

    assertEquals(0, mockedList.size());
}

@Test
public void whenCreateSpy_thenCreate() {
    List spyList = Mockito.spy(new ArrayList());
    spyList.add("one");
    Mockito.verify(spyList).add("one");

    assertEquals(1, spyList.size());
}