" That is, instead of making a HTTP post request to the application, test a method that takes the content of the HTTP request as a parameter and assert on the r

" That is, instead of making a HTTP post request to the application, test a method that takes the content of the HTTP request as a parameter and assert on the return value" The http post is the input into OUR system under test, not an external dependency. Nothing is mocked. I find going through the entire http pipeline catches misconfiguration issues. "For the database, you can test a method that takes parameters and returns the appropriate query." - That's what the fake database does. Implements the interface to the database. In this case implements a fake query method. Nothing is mocked. Stubed but not mocked.