How to fake InitialContext with default constructor

Take advantage of the fact that InitialContext uses an SPI to handle its creation. You can hook into its lifecycle by creating an implementation of javax.naming.spi.InitialContextFactory and passing that to your tests via the system property javax.naming.factory.initial (Context.INTITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY). It's simpler than it sounds.

Given this class:

public class UseInitialContext {

    public UseInitialContext() {
        try {
            InitialContext ic = new InitialContext();
            Object myObject = ic.lookup("myObject");
            System.out.println(myObject);
        } catch (NamingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }


} 

And this impl of InitialContextFactory:

public class MyInitialContextFactory implements InitialContextFactory {

    public Context getInitialContext(Hashtable<?, ?> arg0)
            throws NamingException {

        Context context = Mockito.mock(Context.class);
        Mockito.when(context.lookup("myObject")).thenReturn("This is my object!!");
        return context;
    }
}

Creating an instance of UseInitialContext in a junit test with

-Djava.naming.initial.factory=initial.context.test.MyInitialContext

on the command line outputs This is my object!! (easy to set up in eclipse). I like Mockito for mocking and stubbing. I'd also recommend Micheal Feather's Working Effectively with Legacy Code if you deal with lots of legacy code. It's all about how to find seams in programs in order to isolate specific pieces for testing.

Here's my solution to setting up the Inintial Context for my unit tests. First I added the following test dependency to my project:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
  <artifactId>catalina</artifactId>
  <version>6.0.33</version>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Then I created a static method with the following code:

public static void setupInitialContext() throws Exception {
    System.setProperty(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "org.apache.naming.java.javaURLContextFactory");
    System.setProperty(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.apache.naming");
    InitialContext ic = new InitialContext();
    ic.createSubcontext("jdbc");
    PGSimpleDataSource ds = new PGSimpleDataSource();
    ds.setDatabaseName("postgres");
    ds.setUser("postgres");
    ds.setPassword("admin");
    ic.bind("jdbc/something", ds);
}

Finally in each of my test class I add an @BeforeClass method which calls setupInitialContext.