If you have somewhat of a legacy Java application, and you’re not allowed to change the visibility of your methods, the best way to test private methods is to use reflection.
Internally we’re using helpers to get/set private
and private static
variables as well as invoke private
and private static
methods. The following patterns will let you do pretty much anything related to the private methods and fields. Of course, you can’t change private static final
variables through reflection.
Method method = TargetClass.getDeclaredMethod(methodName, argClasses);
method.setAccessible(true);
return method.invoke(targetObject, argObjects);
And for fields:
Field field = TargetClass.getDeclaredField(fieldName);
field.setAccessible(true);
field.set(object, value);
Notes:
TargetClass.getDeclaredMethod(methodName, argClasses)
lets you look intoprivate
methods. The same thing applies for
getDeclaredField
.- The
setAccessible(true)
is required to play around with privates.