Unit test the new Kotlin coroutine StateFlow

Question

Recently was introduced the class StateFlow as part of Kotlin coroutine.

I'm currently trying it and encounter an issue while trying to unit test my ViewModel. What I want to achieve: testing that my StateFlow is receiving all the state values in the correct order in my ViewModel.

My code is as follow:

ViewModel:

class WalletViewModel(private val getUserWallets: GetUersWallets) : ViewModel() {

val userWallet: StateFlow<State<UserWallets>> get() = _userWallets
private val _userWallets: MutableStateFlow<State<UserWallets>> =
    MutableStateFlow(State.Init)

fun getUserWallets() {
    viewModelScope.launch {
        getUserWallets.getUserWallets()
            .onStart { _userWallets.value = State.Loading }
            .collect { _userWallets.value = it }
    }
}

My test:

    @Test
fun `observe user wallets ok`() = runBlockingTest {
    Mockito.`when`(api.getAssetWallets()).thenReturn(TestUtils.getAssetsWalletResponseOk())
    Mockito.`when`(api.getFiatWallets()).thenReturn(TestUtils.getFiatWalletResponseOk())

    viewModel.getUserWallets()

    val res = arrayListOf<State<UserWallets>>()
    viewModel.userWallet.toList(res) //doesn't works

    Assertions.assertThat(viewModel.userWallet.value is State.Success).isTrue() //works, last value enmited
}

Accessing the last value emitted works. But What I want to test is that all the emitted values are emitted in the correct order. with this piece of code: viewModel.userWallet.toList(res) //doesn't works I'm getting the following error :

java.lang.IllegalStateException: This job has not completed yet
    at kotlinx.coroutines.JobSupport.getCompletionExceptionOrNull(JobSupport.kt:1189)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.test.TestBuildersKt.runBlockingTest(TestBuilders.kt:53)
    at kotlinx.coroutines.test.TestBuildersKt.runBlockingTest$default(TestBuilders.kt:45)
    at WalletViewModelTest.observe user wallets ok(WalletViewModelTest.kt:52)
....

I guess I'm missing something obvious. But not sure why as I'm just getting started with Coroutine and Flow and this error seems to happen when not using runBlockingTest, which I use already.

EDIT: As a temporary solution, I'm testing it as a live data:

    @Captor
    lateinit var captor: ArgumentCaptor<State<UserWallets>>

    @Mock
    lateinit var walletsObserver: Observer<State<UserWallets>>

    @Test
    fun `observe user wallets ok`() = runBlockingTest {
        viewModel.userWallet.asLiveData().observeForever(walletsObserver)

        viewModel.getUserWallets()

        captor.run {
            Mockito.verify(walletsObserver, Mockito.times(3)).onChanged(capture())
            Assertions.assertThat(allValues[0] is State.Init).isTrue()
            Assertions.assertThat(allValues[1] is State.Loading).isTrue()
            Assertions.assertThat(allValues[2] is State.Success).isTrue()
        }
    }

Answer 1

SharedFlow/StateFlow is a hot flow, and as described in the docs, A shared flow is called hot because its active instance exists independently of the presence of collectors. It means, the scope that launches the collection of your flow won't complete by itself.

To solve this issue you need to cancel the scope in which the collect is called, and as the scope of your test is the test itself, its not ok to cancel the test, so what you need is launch it in a different job.

@Test
fun `Testing a integer state flow`() = runBlockingTest{
    val _intSharedFlow = MutableStateFlow(0)
    val intSharedFlow = _intSharedFlow.asStateFlow()
    val testResults = mutableListOf<Int>()

    val job = launch {
        intSharedFlow.toList(testResults)
    }
    _intSharedFlow.value = 5

    assertEquals(2, testResults.size)
    assertEquals(0, testResults.first())
    assertEquals(5, testResults.last())
    job.cancel()
}

Your specific use case:

@Test
fun `observe user wallets ok`() = runBlockingTest {
    whenever(api.getAssetWallets()).thenReturn(TestUtils.getAssetsWalletResponseOk())
    whenever(api.getFiatWallets()).thenReturn(TestUtils.getFiatWalletResponseOk())

    viewModel.getUserWallets()

    val result = arrayListOf<State<UserWallets>>()
    val job = launch {
        viewModel.userWallet.toList(result) //now it should work
    }

    Assertions.assertThat(viewModel.userWallet.value is State.Success).isTrue() //works, last value enmited
    Assertions.assertThat(result.first() is State.Success) //also works
    job.cancel()
}

Two important things:

1. Always cancel your created job to avoid java.lang.IllegalStateException: This job has not completed yet
2. As this is a StateFlow, when start collecting (inside toList) you receive the last state. But if you first start collecting and after you call your function viewModel.getUserWallets(), then inside the result list, you will have all the states, in case you want to test it too.

Answer 2

runBlockingTest just skips the delays in your case but not override the dispatcher used in the ViewModel with your test dispatcher. You need to inject TestCoroutineDispatcher to your ViewModel or since you are using viewModelScope.launch {} which already uses Dispatchers.Main by default, you need to override the main dispatcher via Dispatchers.setMain(testCoroutineDispatcher). You can create and add the following rule to your test file.

class MainCoroutineRule(
        val testDispatcher: TestCoroutineDispatcher = TestCoroutineDispatcher()
) : TestWatcher() {

    override fun starting(description: Description?) {
        super.starting(description)
        Dispatchers.setMain(testDispatcher)
    }

    override fun finished(description: Description?) {
        super.finished(description)
        Dispatchers.resetMain()
        testDispatcher.cleanupTestCoroutines()
    }
} 

And in your test file

@get:Rule
var mainCoroutineRule = MainCoroutineRule()

@Test
fun `observe user wallets ok`() = mainCoroutineRule.testDispatcher.runBlockingTest {
}

Btw it is always a good practice to inject dispatchers. For instance if you would have been using a dispatcher other than Dispatchers.Main in your coroutine scope like viewModelScope.launch(Dispatchers.Default), then your test will fail again even if you are using a test dispatcher. The reason is you can only override main dispatcher with Dispatchers.setMain() as it can be understood from its name but not Dispatchers.IO or Dispatchers.Default. In that case you need to inject mainCoroutineRule.testDispatcher to your view model and use the injected dispatcher rather than hardcoding it.