Testing Spring MVC Controller that make use of @ModelAttribute to bind method return values

[Duran Harris]

Hi all,

I am having a bit of a problem getting comfortable with testing Spring MVC controller.

Consider a method like this:

	@ModelAttribute("branches")
	public List<Branch> getBranches() throws WifireAdminSessionException {
		return ispService.getIspBranch();
	}

I have been using methods like these to expose collections to thymeleaf views(I am used to using Seam/CDI, go figure).

Now I wish to use Spring Test MVC to unit test my controllers but I am running into problems.
For example, I am trying to test the following method:

@RequestMapping(value = "", method = RequestMethod.GET)
	public String viewAll(Model model)  {
		return "isp/gateway/list";
	}

My test looks like:

     @Test
     public void testControllerMethod() throws
     Exception {
         
               mvc.perform(get("/isp/gateway"))
                   .andDo(MockMvcResultHandlers.print())
                   .andExpect(view().name("isp/gateway/list"))
                    );
    
     }

But the problem is that the "branches" collection has never been populated ( I guess because I am executing in the context of spring-test-mvc).
I am doing something horribly wrong but I'm not sure what it is..

[Duran Harris]

Ok, so my solution was to mock the return values of all the service calls with Mockito so that regardless of when the method was called, it would still return sensible results.