Spring ApplicationContext cache, @SpringBean, and context reloading

[jamesdh]

@SpringBean annotation describes the following behavior:

As with Spring’s own @MockBean this will modify your ApplicationContext, and will create an unique context for your Specification preventing it from being reused by Spring’s Context Caching outside of the current Specification.

Unfortunately, on any sizable code base this quickly results in the ApplicationContext being reloaded frequently, causing our tests to take many times longer to run.

I tried wiring up some mechanism for dynamically auto-mocking beans on an object under test, and then restoring the original beans on cleanup() and thus avoiding dirtying the original Spring ApplicationContext, but I've had no luck in getting this working. Something similar to antoinemeyer/mock-in-bean.

Would it be possible to improve upon @SpringBean to do something similar?

[jamesdh]

This was my hasty stab at trying to get something similar working:

@Shared DetachedMockFactory mockFactory = new DetachedMockFactory()
@Shared MockUtil mockUtil = new MockUtil()
@Shared Map<String,Object> mockRegistry = [:]

public <T> T mockInjectedBeans(Specification spec, Class<T> beanType, List<String> toMock = []) {
    T bean = context.getBean(beanType)
    Field[] fields = beanType.getDeclaredFields()
    fields.each { field ->
        if (context.containsBean(field.name) && toMock.contains(field.name)) {
            field.setAccessible(true)
            Object injectable = context.getBean(field.name)
            mockRegistry.put(field.name, injectable)
            def mock = mockFactory.Mock(field.type)
            mockUtil.attachMock(mock, spec)
            field.set(bean, mock)
        }
    }
    log.info("Mocked beans: ${mockRegistry.keySet().join(", ")}")
    return bean
}