how to unit test a synchronized method?

Question

Say I have such a method:

synchronized void incrementIndex() {
      index++;
}

I want to unit test this method to see whether index's final value is set correctly if multiple threads simultaneously attempt to increment index. Assuming I don't know about the "synchronized" keyword in the method's declaration (and I only know the contract of the method), how can I do the test?

p.s. I am using Mockito for writing test cases if it helps.

Answer 1

You could test this by having multiple threads execute the method and then asserting that the result is what you would expect. I have my doubts about how effective and reliable this would be. Multithreaded code is notoriously difficult to test and it mostly comes down to careful design. I would definitely recommend adding tests that assert that the methods you expect to by synchronized actually have the synchronized modifier. See an example of both approaches below:

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.is;
import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.not;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;

import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.lang.reflect.Modifier;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.junit.Test;

public class SyncTest {
  private final static int NUM_THREADS = 10;
  private final static int NUM_ITERATIONS = 1000;

  @Test
  public void testSynchronized() throws InterruptedException {
    // This test will likely perform differently on different platforms.
    ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NUM_THREADS);
    final Counter sync = new Counter();
    final Counter notSync = new Counter();

    for (int i = 0; i < NUM_THREADS; i++) {
      executor.submit(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
          for (int i = 0; i < NUM_ITERATIONS; i++) {
            sync.incSync();
            notSync.inc();
          }
        }
      });
    }

    executor.shutdown();
    executor.awaitTermination(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
    assertThat(sync.getValue(), is(NUM_THREADS * NUM_ITERATIONS));
    assertThat(notSync.getValue(), is(not(NUM_THREADS * NUM_ITERATIONS)));
  }

  @Test
  public void methodIncSyncHasSynchronizedModifier() throws Exception {
    Method m = Counter.class.getMethod("incSync");
    assertThat(Modifier.isSynchronized(m.getModifiers()), is(true)); 
  }

  private static class Counter {
    private int value = 0;

    public synchronized void incSync() {
      value++;
    }

    public void inc() {
      value++;
    }

    public int getValue() {
      return value;
    }
  }
}