Mockito - NullpointerException when stubbing Method

I had this issue and my problem was that I was calling my method with any() instead of anyInt(). So I had:

doAnswer(...).with(myMockObject).thisFuncTakesAnInt(any())

and I had to change it to:

doAnswer(...).with(myMockObject).thisFuncTakesAnInt(anyInt())

I have no idea why that produced a NullPointerException. Maybe this will help the next poor soul.

For future readers, another cause for NPE when using mocks is forgetting to initialize the mocks like so:

@Mock
SomeMock someMock;

@InjectMocks
SomeService someService;

@Before
public void setup(){
    MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this); //without this you will get NPE
}

@Test
public void someTest(){
    Mockito.when(someMock.someMethod()).thenReturn("some result");
   // ...
}

Also make sure you are using JUnit for all annotations. I once accidently created a test with @Test from testNG so the @Before didn't work with it (in testNG the annotation is @BeforeTest)

The default return value of methods you haven't stubbed yet is false for boolean methods, an empty collection or map for methods returning collections or maps and null otherwise.

This also applies to method calls within when(...). In you're example when(myService.getListWithData(inputData).get()) will cause a NullPointerException because myService.getListWithData(inputData) is null - it has not been stubbed before.

One option is create mocks for all intermediate return values and stub them before use. For example:

ListWithData listWithData = mock(ListWithData.class);
when(listWithData.get()).thenReturn(item1);
when(myService.getListWithData()).thenReturn(listWithData);

Or alternatively, you can specify a different default answer when creating a mock, to make methods return a new mock instead of null: RETURNS_DEEP_STUBS

SomeService myService = mock(SomeService.class, Mockito.RETURNS_DEEP_STUBS);
when(myService.getListWithData().get()).thenReturn(item1);

You should read the Javadoc of Mockito.RETURNS_DEEP_STUBS which explains this in more detail and also has some warnings about its usage.

I hope this helps. Just note that your example code seems to have more issues, such as missing assert or verify statements and calling setters on mocks (which does not have any effect).

I had the same problem and my issue was simply that I had not annotated the class properly using @RunWith. In your example, make sure that you have:

@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class Test {
...

Once I did that, the NullPointerExceptions disappeared.