Support setting and getting static fields in ReflectionTestUtils [SPR-6792]

[spring-projects-issues]

allnightlong opened SPR-6792 and commented

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Referenced from: commits 063ef24

3 votes, 4 watchers

[spring-projects-issues]

Stéphane Nicoll commented

Changing static fields seem a dangerous and weird thing to do. What do you think Sam Brannen?

[spring-projects-issues]

Sam Brannen commented

It is indeed potentially dangerous and likely a rather uncommon use case.

Having said that, however, ReflectionTestUtils is only available in the spring-test module. So it generally (hopefully) would not be used in production code.

So if the user has a genuine use case for this in a testing scenario, I don't think it would be harmful to introduce this functionality.

Regards,

Sam

p.s. As far as I know, this functionality is already provide by PowerMock and similar mocking frameworks.

[spring-projects-issues]

Dieter Van de Walle commented

Ah damn, just needed this functionality. One vote up! :)

[spring-projects-issues]

Sam Brannen commented

Completed as described in GitHub commit 063ef24:

Support static fields in ReflectionTestUtils

Prior to this commit it was possible to set or get a static field using
ReflectionTestUtils but only if an instance of the target class was
available.

This commit introduces dedicated support for setting and getting static
fields in ReflectionTestUtils when only the target class is available.

Furthermore, this commit increases the robustness of
ReflectionTestUtilsTests regarding expected exceptions and simplifies
the Javadoc for ReflectionTestUtils.