Accessing non public Method of Object in JUNIT - junit

Question

Hi I am new to unit testing. Is it possible to access methods that are private?
A very simple example
ObjectA
----------
File file;
private void setupFile (){
//do something
file = "C:\file.dat"
}
In TestCase
File sth = ObjectA.setupFile();
assertNotNull(sth);
I am unable to test whether the file variable is null in method ObjectA.setup()
as I cannot run ObjectA.setupFile()
I am not sure about whether doing like this make sense in terms of unit testing.
So is that a better practice to write every method returning sth and set them public for easier unit testing?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

In general, you should avoid changing the access of a method/field to enable testing. If you do this then you risk developers using the method directly.
However, if you do need to, then making it protected as Deco says is a good way, so it's accessible from the JUnit tests. If you do this, make sure that it is well documented that this is an method for internal use.
A better way is to test the behaviour of the public methods; you shouldn't care about internal implementation details of a class, so you should only be testing public methods. It's hard to tell from your code, but presumably, the setupFile() has effects later on other methods, so you can test those effects, not the fact that file is not null.
External dependencies (such as dependencies on file system, environment variables) can be worked around in your tests, or injected directly into the class. For the general principle, see my answer to How to test code dependent on environment variables using JUnit?

Answer 2

If it is not absolutely necessary to have the method as private, you can have it as package private (i.e. default access) so that you can call it directly in a JUnit test.
Package private methods can only be used in the package that they are declared, and do not become part of the API of the class. You declare a method package private by putting no modifier on it's declaration.
Here's an example to demonstrate:
public class MyClass() {
int foo;
public MyClass() {
this.foo = 0;
}
void notSoComplexCalculationMethod(int a) {
foo = a * 2;
}
//Other methods here . . .
}
public class MyClassTest extends TestCase {
private MyClass myClass;
protected void setUp() {
super.setUp();
myClass = new MyClass();
}
public void testNotSoComplexCalculationMethod() {
int a = 2;
assertEquals(4, myClass.notSoComplexCalculationMethod(a));
//Unit test passes, yay! Now you've tested a package private method.
}
}