Getting "NoSuchMethodError: org.hamcrest.Matcher.describeMismatch" when running test in IntelliJ 10.5

Make sure the hamcrest jar is higher on the import order than your JUnit jar.

JUnit comes with its own org.hamcrest.Matcher class that is probably being used instead.

You can also download and use the junit-dep-4.10.jar instead which is JUnit without the hamcrest classes.

mockito also has the hamcrest classes in it as well, so you may need to move\reorder it as well

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This problem also arises when you have mockito-all on your class path, which is already deprecated.

If possible just include mockito-core.

Maven config for mixing junit, mockito and hamcrest:

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
    <artifactId>hamcrest-core</artifactId>
    <version>1.3</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
    <artifactId>hamcrest-library</artifactId>
    <version>1.3</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.mockito</groupId>
    <artifactId>mockito-all</artifactId>
    <version>1.9.5</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    <version>4.11</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

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The problem was that the wrong hamcrest.Matcher, not hamcrest.MatcherAssert, class was being used. That was being pulled in from a junit-4.8 dependency one of my dependencies was specifying.

To see what dependencies (and versions) are included from what source while testing, run:

mvn dependency:tree -Dscope=test

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The following should be the most correct today. Note, junit 4.11 depends on hamcrest-core, so you shouldn't need to specify that at all, mockito-all cannot be used since it includes (not depends on) hamcrest 1.1

<dependency>
    <groupId>junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    <version>4.11</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.mockito</groupId>
    <artifactId>mockito-core</artifactId>
    <version>1.10.8</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
            <artifactId>hamcrest-core</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>

---

This worked for me after struggling a bit

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
    <artifactId>hamcrest-all</artifactId>
    <version>1.3</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
 </dependency>

 <dependency>
    <groupId>org.mockito</groupId>
    <artifactId>mockito-all</artifactId>
    <version>1.9.5</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
 </dependency>

 <dependency>
    <groupId>junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    <version>4.11</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
 </dependency>

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I know this is an old thread but what solved the issue for me was adding the following to my build.gradle files. As already stated above there is a compatibility issue with mockito-all

Possibly useful post:

testCompile ('junit:junit:4.12') {
    exclude group: 'org.hamcrest'
}
testCompile ('org.mockito:mockito-core:1.10.19') {
    exclude group: 'org.hamcrest'
}
testCompile 'org.hamcrest:hamcrest-core:1.3'

---

Try

expect(new ThrowableMessageMatcher(new StringContains(message)))

instead of

expectMessage(message)

You may write a custom ExpectedException or utility method to wrap up the code.

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As of July, 2020 the following dependencies in pom.xml worked for me:

<dependency>
    <groupId>junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    <version>4.13</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
    <artifactId>hamcrest</artifactId>
    <version>2.1</version>
</dependency>

With this 4.13 junit library and hamcrest, it uses hamcrest.MatcherAssert when asserting and throws exception- enter image description here

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Despite the fact that this is a very old question and probably many of the beforementioned ideas solved many problems, I still want to share the solution with the community that fixed my problem.

I found that the problem was a function called "hasItem" which I was using to check whether or not a JSON-Array contains a specific item. In my case I checked for a value of type Long.

And this led to the problem.

Somehow, the Matchers have problems with values of type Long. (I do not use JUnit or Rest-Assured so much so idk. exactly why, but I guess that the returned JSON-data does just contain Integers.)

So what I did to actually fix the problem was the following. Instead of using:

long ID = ...;

...
.then().assertThat()
  .body("myArray", hasItem(ID));

you just have to cast to Integer. So the working code looked like this:

long ID = ...;

...
.then().assertThat()
  .body("myArray", hasItem((int) ID));

That's probably not the best solution, but I just wanted to mention that the exception can also be thrown because of wrong/unknown data types.

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I have a gradle project and when my build.gradle dependencies section looks like this:

dependencies {
    implementation group: 'org.apache.commons', name: 'commons-lang3', version: '3.8.1'

    testImplementation group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-all', version: '1.10.19'
    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.12'
//    testCompile group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-core', version: '2.23.4'

    compileOnly 'org.projectlombok:lombok:1.18.4'
    apt 'org.projectlombok:lombok:1.18.4'
}

it leads to this exception:

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.hamcrest.Matcher.describeMismatch(Ljava/lang/Object;Lorg/hamcrest/Description;)V

    at org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat(MatcherAssert.java:18)
    at org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat(MatcherAssert.java:8)

to fix this issue, I've substituted "mockito-all" with "mockito-core".

dependencies {
    implementation group: 'org.apache.commons', name: 'commons-lang3', version: '3.8.1'

//    testImplementation group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-all', version: '1.10.19'
    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.12'
    testCompile group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-core', version: '2.23.4'

    compileOnly 'org.projectlombok:lombok:1.18.4'
    apt 'org.projectlombok:lombok:1.18.4'
}

The explanation between mockito-all and mockito-core can be found here: https://solidsoft.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/beyond-the-mockito-refcard-part-3-mockito-core-vs-mockito-all-in-mavengradle-based-projects/

mockito-all.jar besides Mockito itself contains also (as of 1.9.5) two dependencies: Hamcrest and Objenesis (let’s omit repackaged ASM and CGLIB for a moment). The reason was to have everything what is needed inside an one JAR to just put it on a classpath. It can look strange, but please remember than Mockito development started in times when pure Ant (without dependency management) was the most popular build system for Java projects and the all external JARs required by a project (i.e. our project’s dependencies and their dependencies) had to be downloaded manually and specified in a build script. On the other hand mockito-core.jar is just Mockito classes (also with repackaged ASM and CGLIB). When using it with Maven or Gradle required dependencies (Hamcrest and Objenesis) are managed by those tools (downloaded automatically and put on a test classpath). It allows to override used versions (for example if our projects uses never, but backward compatible version), but what is more important those dependencies are not hidden inside mockito-all.jar what allows to detected possible version incompatibility with dependency analyze tools. This is much better solution when dependency managed tool is used in a project.

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In my case, I had to exclude an older hamcrest from junit-vintage:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.junit.vintage</groupId>
  <artifactId>junit-vintage-engine</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
      <artifactId>hamcrest-core</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
  <artifactId>hamcrest</artifactId>
  <version>2.1</version>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

---

This worked for me. No need to exclude anything. I just used mockito-core instead mockito-all

testCompile 'junit:junit:4.12'
testCompile group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-core', version: '3.0.0'
testCompile group: 'org.hamcrest', name: 'hamcrest-library', version: '2.1'

---

What worked for me was excluding the hamcrest group from the junit test compile.

Here is the code from my build.gradle:

testCompile ('junit:junit:4.11') {
    exclude group: 'org.hamcrest'
}

If you're running IntelliJ you may need to run gradle cleanIdea idea clean build to detect the dependencies again.

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I know that's not the best answer, but if you can't get the classpath working, this is a plan B solution.

In my test classpath, I added the following interface with a default implementation for the describeMismatch method.

package org.hamcrest;

/**
 * PATCH because there's something wrong with the classpath. Hamcrest should be higher than Mockito so that the BaseMatcher
 * implements the describeMismatch method, but it doesn't work for me. 
 */
public interface Matcher<T> extends SelfDescribing {

    boolean matches(Object item);

    default void describeMismatch(Object item, Description mismatchDescription) {
        mismatchDescription.appendDescriptionOf(this).appendValue(item);
    }

    @Deprecated
    void _dont_implement_Matcher___instead_extend_BaseMatcher_();
}

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For jUnit 4.12, the following dependency combination fixed my issue.

<dependency>
   <groupId>junit</groupId>
   <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
   <version>4.12</version>
   <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
   <artifactId>hamcrest-core</artifactId>
   <version>1.3</version>
   <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
   <artifactId>hamcrest-library</artifactId>
   <version>1.3</version>
   <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

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