unit testing - Java verify void method calls n times with Mockito

Question

I'm trying to verify that a (void) method is being called inside of a DAO - I'm using a commit point that sends a list of results up to that point, resets the list and continues. Say I have 4 things in the list and I have a commit point of 1, I would expect the "send" method to be called 4 times. I can verify that the method gets called once by writing

Mockito.verify(mock).send()

it passes.. but I want to verify the number of times it was called. I would think that

Mockito.verify(mock.send(), times(4))

would be sufficient, but it says the parameters are not correct for verify.

Incidentally, if I change Mockito.verify(mock).send() to Mockito.verify(mock.send()) or Mockito.verify((mock).send()) I get the same error. Thoughts on this?

Answer 1

The necessary method is Mockito#verify:

public static <T> T verify(T mock,
                           VerificationMode mode)

mock is your mocked object and mode is the VerificationMode that describes how the mock should be verified. Possible modes are:

verify(mock, times(5)).someMethod("was called five times");
verify(mock, never()).someMethod("was never called");
verify(mock, atLeastOnce()).someMethod("was called at least once");
verify(mock, atLeast(2)).someMethod("was called at least twice");
verify(mock, atMost(3)).someMethod("was called at most 3 times");
verify(mock, atLeast(0)).someMethod("was called any number of times"); // useful with captors
verify(mock, only()).someMethod("no other method has been called on the mock");

You'll need these static imports from the Mockito class in order to use the verify method and these verification modes:

import static org.mockito.Mockito.atLeast;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.atLeastOnce;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.atMost;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.never;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.only;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.times;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.verify;

So in your case the correct syntax will be:

Mockito.verify(mock, times(4)).send()

This verifies that the method send was called 4 times on the mocked object. It will fail if it was called less or more than 4 times.

---

If you just want to check, if the method has been called once, then you don't need to pass a VerificationMode. A simple

verify(mock).someMethod("was called once");

would be enough. It internally uses verify(mock, times(1)).someMethod("was called once");.

---

It is possible to have multiple verification calls on the same mock to achieve a "between" verification. Mockito doesn't support something like this verify(mock, between(4,6)).someMethod("was called between 4 and 6 times");, but we can write

verify(mock, atLeast(4)).someMethod("was called at least four times ...");
verify(mock, atMost(6)).someMethod("... and not more than six times");

instead, to get the same behaviour. The bounds are included, so the test case is green when the method was called 4, 5 or 6 times.