What’s the difference between Mockito Matchers isA, any, eq, and same?

• any() checks absolutely nothing. Since Mockito 2.0, any(T.class) shares isA semantics to mean “any T” or properly “any instance of type T“.

  This is a change compared to Mockito 1.x, where any(T.class) checked absolutely nothing but saved a cast prior to Java 8: “Any kind object, not necessary of the given class. The class argument is provided only to avoid casting.”

• isA(T.class) checks that the argument instanceof T, implying it is non-null.

• same(obj) checks that the argument refers to the same instance as obj, such that arg == obj is true.

• eq(obj) checks that the argument equals obj according to its equals method. This is also the behavior if you pass in real values without using matchers.

  Note that unless equals is overridden, you’ll see the default Object.equals implementation, which would have the same behavior as same(obj).

If you need more exact customization, you can use an adapter for your own predicate:

• For Mockito 1.x, use argThat with a custom Hamcrest Matcher<T> that selects exactly the objects you need.
• For Mockito 2.0 and beyond, use Matchers.argThat with a custom org.mockito.ArgumentMatcher<T>, or MockitoHamcrest.argThat with a custom Hamcrest Matcher<T>.

You may also use refEq, which uses reflection to confirm object equality; Hamcrest has a similar implementation with SamePropertyValuesAs for public bean-style properties. Note that on GitHub issue #1800 proposes deprecating and removing refEq, and as in that issue you might prefer eq to better give your classes better encapsulation over their sense of equality.