Mockito: Trying to spy on method is calling the original method

One more possible scenario which may causing issues with spies is when you're testing spring beans (with spring test framework) or some other framework that is proxing your objects during test.

Example

@Autowired
private MonitoringDocumentsRepository repository

void test(){
    repository = Mockito.spy(repository)
    Mockito.doReturn(docs1, docs2)
            .when(repository).findMonitoringDocuments(Mockito.nullable(MonitoringDocumentSearchRequest.class));
}

In above code both Spring and Mockito will try to proxy your MonitoringDocumentsRepository object, but Spring will be first, which will cause real call of findMonitoringDocuments method. If we debug our code just after putting a spy on repository object it will look like this inside debugger:

repository = MonitoringDocumentsRepository$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$MockitoMock$

@SpyBean to the rescue

If instead @Autowired annotation we use @SpyBean annotation, we will solve above problem, the SpyBean annotation will also inject repository object but it will be firstly proxied by Mockito and will look like this inside debugger

repository = MonitoringDocumentsRepository$$MockitoMock$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$

and here is the code:

@SpyBean
private MonitoringDocumentsRepository repository

void test(){
    Mockito.doReturn(docs1, docs2)
            .when(repository).findMonitoringDocuments(Mockito.nullable(MonitoringDocumentSearchRequest.class));
}

Important gotcha on spying real objects

When stubbing a method using spies , please use doReturn() family of methods.

when(Object) would result in calling the actual method that can throw exceptions.

List spy = spy(new LinkedList());

//Incorrect , spy.get() will throw IndexOutOfBoundsException   
 when(spy.get(0)).thenReturn("foo");

//You have to use doReturn() for stubbing    
doReturn("foo").when(spy).get(0);

I've found yet another reason for spy to call the original method.

Someone had the idea to mock a final class, and found about MockMaker:

As this works differently to our current mechanism and this one has different limitations and as we want to gather experience and user feedback, this feature had to be explicitly activated to be available ; it can be done via the mockito extension mechanism by creating the file src/test/resources/mockito-extensions/org.mockito.plugins.MockMaker containing a single line: mock-maker-inline

Source: https://github.com/mockito/mockito/wiki/What%27s-new-in-Mockito-2#mock-the-unmockable-opt-in-mocking-of-final-classesmethods

After I merged and brought that file to my machine, my tests failed.

I just had to remove the line (or the file), and spy() worked.

One way to make sure a method from a class is not called is to override the method with a dummy.

    WebFormCreatorActivity activity = spy(new WebFormCreatorActivity(clientFactory) {//spy(new WebFormCreatorActivity(clientFactory));
            @Override
            public void select(TreeItem i) {
                log.debug("SELECT");
            };
        });

As mentioned in some of the comments, my method was "static" (though being called on by an instance of the class)

public class A {
  static void myMethod() {...}
}
A instance = spy(new A());
verify(instance).myMethod(); // still calls the original method because it's static

Work around was make an instance method or upgrade Mockito to a newer version with some config: https://stackoverflow.com/a/62860455/32453

Bit late to the party but above solutions did not work for me , so sharing my 0.02$

Mokcito version: 1.10.19

MyClass.java

private int handleAction(List<String> argList, String action)

Test.java

MyClass spy = PowerMockito.spy(new MyClass());

Following did NOT work for me (actual method was being called):

1.

doReturn(0).when(spy , "handleAction", ListUtils.EMPTY_LIST, new String());

2.

doReturn(0).when(spy , "handleAction", any(), anyString());

3.

doReturn(0).when(spy , "handleAction", null, null);

Following WORKED:

doReturn(0).when(spy , "handleAction", any(List.class), anyString());