[SOLVED] Save object in debug and than use it as stub in tests

Save object in debug and than use it as stub in tests

My application connects to db and gets tree of categories from here. In debug regime I can see this big tree object and I just thought of ability to save this object somewhere on disk to use in test stubs. Like this:

mockedDao = mock(MyDao.class);
when(mockedDao.getCategoryTree()).thenReturn(mySavedObject);

Assuming mySavedObject - is huge enough, so I don't want to generate it manually or write special generation code. I just want to be able to serialize and save it somewhere during debug session then deserialize it and pass to thenReturn in tests. Is there is a standard way to do so? If not how is better to implement such approach?

Solution

I do love your idea, it's awesome!

I am not aware of a library that would offer that feature out of the box. You can try using ObjectOutoutStream and ObjectInputStream (ie the standard Java serialization) if your objects all implement Seriablizable. Typically they do not. In that case, you might have more luck using XStream or one of its friends.