How to mock a complicate content

[Wladimir Babitzki]

What I need, it should be a possibility to go through a html page, sort links from it and look if the pages, referenced with the links, have also links. All the found links should be represented as a tree structure, whereby each link element should point to its children elements, that also can have links.

The implementation looks like:

 
public Link[] searchLinksAsList(Content content)  {
 
---
 
}
 
public LinksTree searchLinksAsTree(Content content) {
 
LinksTree tree = new LinksTree();
 
Link top = new Link(Link.TOP);
 
Link[] links = searchLinkAsList(content);
 
tree.addLink(top, links);
 
for (int i=0; i<links.getLength(); i++) {
 
Content subContent = new Content(links[i]);
 
Link[] subLinks = searchLinkAsList(subContent);
 
tree.addLink(links[i], subLinks);
}
 
return tree;
}
 

That�s not clear for me, what is the best way to test the searchLinksAsTree? It�s simple with searchLinksAsList, there I can feed a mock content and check expected results, but to mock the content for the multi dimensional searchLinksAsTree is hard work.

I�ll appreciate any suggestion

Thank you

[Lasse Koskela]

How about mocking that searchListsAsList() method while testing for searchLinksAsTree()?

I.e., instead of

public void testItAllAtOnce() {
    Finder finder = new Finder();
    LinksTree tree = finder.searchLinksAsTree(mockContent);
    assertThatAllTheLinksFromMockContentWereCollected();
}

try something like

private int invocationsToSearchLinkAsList = 0;
 
public void testTheFirstLayer() {
    Finder finder = new Finder() {
        @Override
        public Link[] searchLinkAsList(Content content) {
            invocationsToSearchLinkAsList++;
            return new Link[0];
        }
    };
    LinksTree tree = finder.searchLinksAsTree(mockContent);
    assertEquals(numberOfLinksOnFirstLevel, invocationsToSearchLinkAsList);
}
 
public void testTheSecondLayer() {
    // test that searchLinkAsList() works
}

[Wladimir Babitzki]

Thanks! It�s really the simplest and nicest solution!