That’s an integration test. Your external api returns a number, let’s say 10. You have two local functions. One that is very general and fetches that number, and another that transforms that number. Your local transformation function is the one that is tested. The other function is part of integration tests and in general can’t be unit tested.
Exactly, there's a layer (integration testing) where I usually do need to have a test against a mock to validate my function doing the external call is passing a request I expect. I can break it down into a parameter supplier function that will generate the proper request params and test that but I don't see any gain in abstracting that away simply to avoid mocks.
