Tag: JUnit

What’s New in JUnit 5.5

Screen Shot 2019-06-07 at 2.50.27 PM

A new minor version of JUnit 5, 5.5, was released on June 30th. That means it’s time for yet another article looking at what’s new in this release of JUnit 5! The JUnit team keeps up their blistering pace of a new minor release roughly every four months, and while this release might not quite have a “killer” new feature like previous releases have had, the aggregate of all the tweaks and enhancements have actually made this a pretty big release, far larger than I will be able to cover here. Let’s dive in and take a look at a some of the key new features and changes introduced in JUnit 5.5.

Declarative Timeouts

Ideally automated tests should execute quickly, however some tests; integration, feature, end-to-end tests, etc., might require complicated setup and/or interact with remote resources. This behavior might occasionally lead to situations where a test can run excessively long. To address this concern @Timeout was introduced to provide declarative timeout support for test cases and lifecycle methods. Here is a code example showing some of the ways @Timeout can be used. I’ll go into more detail on its usage below:


@Timeout(3) // Sets timeout limit for each test in class to three seconds
@TestMethodOrder(OrderAnnotation.class)
public class TimeoutTest {
static int testCounter = 0;
@BeforeAll
@Timeout(2) // If this timeout is exceeded, all tests are failed
public static void classSetupWithTimeout() throws InterruptedException {
// …complex setup code
}
@BeforeEach
@Timeout(2) // If timeout is exceeded current test is failed, but next test will be
// attempted
public void methodSetupWithTimeout() throws InterruptedException {
Thread.sleep(1500 * testCounter);
}
@Test
@Timeout(unit = TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS, value = 500L) // Default unit is seconds, but other options available
@Order(1)
public void testTestCaseTimeout() throws InterruptedException {
Thread.sleep(600);
}
@Test
@Order(2)
public void testExceedsClassTimeLimit() throws InterruptedException {
Thread.sleep(3500);
}
@Test
@Order(3)
public void timeoutTest1() {
testCounter = testCounter + 1;
}
@Test
@Order(4) // Will fail due to timeout
public void timeoutTest2() {
testCounter = testCounter + 1;
}
@Test
@Order(5) // Will fail due to timeout, but still attempted
public void timeoutTest3() {
testCounter = testCounter + 1;
}
}

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TimeoutTest.java

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@Timeout isn’t limited to being placed on test cases themselves. Along with the aforementioned test cases, @Timeout can also be placed at the type level, where it will provide a default timeout for all test cases declared in the class, this can be overridden by adding a @Timeout to a test case. @Timeout can also be added to lifecycle methods, @BeforeAll, @BeforeEach​, @AfterEach, @AfterAll​.

@Timeout also provides flexibility in setting the unit for timeout length. By default @Timeout uses seconds for its unit of measurement, however @Timeout also has the unit field which can take a value of TimeUnit. Hopefully you’ll never need to declare a TimeUnit value larger than seconds, but having the flexibility to use milliseconds, microseconds, or even nanoseconds, can be helpful when testing race conditions and following the principle of “fail fast” even in the automated testing world (even a unit as small as a second can start to add up in a large enough test suite).

Timeouts can also be declared as system properties. Like with @Timeout the default unit is seconds, but can be changed by adding the following labels:

ns|μs|ms|s|m|h|d

More specific properties override less specific ones (i.e. setting timeout.beforeall, would override the value of timeout.lifecycle). This provides a way of setting sensible defaults for how long tests should run for that can be easily overridden if needed. Below is the full list of timeout system properties:

junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.testable.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.test.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.testtemplate.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.testfactory.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.lifecycle.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.beforeall.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.beforeeach.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.aftereach.method.default
junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.afterall.method.default

@RegisterExtension Updates

@RegisterExtension was added in JUnit 5.1 to support registering extensions programmatically. Since 5.1 @RegisterExtension has mostly remained unchanged, save for the addition of being able to declare their execution order which was added in 5.4. With JUnit 5.5 @RegisterExtension has a number of small but helpful changes made to it, let’s take a look at them.

@RegisterExtension Gets Loud 📣

There are several constraints around how @RegisterExtension can be used. Two of them are the field annotated with @RegisterExtension must not be private and the assigned value must implement an Extension interface. With JUnit 5.5 violating these constraints will cause an exception to be thrown, whereas previously fields that violated these constraints would be silently ignored. The below gif demonstrates the change in behavior.

@RegisterExtension Gets Secretive

In previous releases of JUnit, the declared field of @RegisterExtension must also implement an Extension interface. The JUnit team relaxed this constraint that only the assigned value of the field must implement Extension. This is helpful for Extension designers to hide fields that users of an extension should not be changing and, generally make an API that is cleaner and easier to use.

TestExecutionListener Fails More Quietly

While JUnit has made misusage of @RegisterExtension “noisier”, with JUnit 5.5 exceptions thrown by TestExecutionListeners have gotten quieter. In JUnit 5.4 and before when an exception was thrown by a TestExecutionListener this caused the entire test run to terminate. This behavior isn’t really desirable. Along with listeners existing within the world of reporting, so not necessarily “critical”, even a test throwing an exception would terminate a test run.

With JUnit 5.5 when a TestExecutionListener throws an exception, the stacktrace is instead printed to the console at the WARN level. This allows the test suite execution to continue, but for the information about an error occurring not being lost, and also being clearly indicated.

MethodOrder Random Seed Print Out

In JUnit 5.4 method ordering was added. One of the default implementation of method ordering is random method ordering. Random method ordering could be useful for checking that tests don’t have any unnecessary relationships between them. By running tests in a random order, this can validate that testCaseD doesn’t depend upon/is impacted by behavior occurring in testCaseC.

Note: This is generally only referring to unit tests. It can be appropriate for other types of automated tests to have dependencies upon one another.

If a seed isn’t supplied via the junit.jupiter.execution.order.random.seed property, JUnit will generate a seed for you. With JUnit 5.5, when this happens JUnit will also print log statement displaying the seed value used. This allows a test run to be recreated if a problem was discovered. The below gif demonstrates the behavior:

Execute Classes in Parallel

The JUnit team has made further improvements to their support of parallel test execution. In JUnit 5.5 the configuration parameter: ​junit.jupiter.execution.parallel.mode.classes.default has been added, that allows support for defining how parallel test execution should interact at the class level. Like with ​​junit.jupiter.execution.parallel.mode.default, there are two default values accepted SAME_THREAD and CONCURRENT.  Additionally junit.jupiter.execution.parallel.mode.classes.default will default to the value that junit.jupiter.execution.parallel.mode.default is set to, which is SAME_THREAD by default.

The goal of this change was to make it easier to configure parallel test execution in your test suite. This behavior previously could had been implemented by manually adding @Execution(MODE) to the declaration of every class. The problem with that though is in the description, it required manual work. The addition junit.jupiter.execution.parallel.mode.classes.default allows a default behavior that can be applied to an entire test suite from a single location that can be overridden if needed. Below is a gif showing how a test suite would execute using the different settings:

Default Test Discovery Implementations

A core characteristic of JUnit 5 is its extensibility. Between the needs of library developers and the needs of individual organizations, the JUnit framework cannot reasonably natively support every use case. To address this concern, the JUnit team has worked to make JUnit 5 a foundation that is exceptionally easy to build off of. This characteristic continues with the addition of default implementations for test discovery for both Jupiter and Vintage JUnit tests.

The default test discovery implementations will make it easier to write custom TestEngine implementations. Generally this isn’t something most developers will need to do, but if you have an unusual use case or a need not quite being met by existing TestEngines, then have default discovery implementations will make writing your own TestEngine a little easier.

I would recommend checking out the associated GitHub issues behind this change for more in-depth information: 1739 and 1798.

Deprecation of EnableIf/DisabledIf

Introduced with the release of JUnit 5 was the ability to conditionally disable tests. This feature has gradually been enhanced over time with the JUnit team providing several sensible defaults like disabling (or enabling) a test based upon OS, Java version, and by system property.

However with JUnit 5.5 the JUnit team will be deprecating @EnabledIf and @DisabledIf for eventual removal (currently slated to be removed in 5.6). @EnabledIf/@DisabliedIf provided a mechanism for writing out a script (JavaScript, Groovy, et al.) to evaluate if a test should be executed. Ultimately though this method provided little benefit over writing an implementation of DisabledCondition, while having the drawbacks of creating a maintenance headache as the script would have to be copy and pasted if it was to be reused and also being slower to execute.

Even setting aside the above concerns, the expiration date of using script based conditions was nigh. Nashhorn, Java’s JavaScript engine, was deprecated with Java 11 deprecated and schedule for removal, and script based conditions don’t play nicely when using the module path. If you are using @EnabledIfor @DisabliedIf in your projects, it would be a good idea to start migrating away from them now.

Conclusion

Because there were so many changes in this release, I was only able to cover a small portion of them (smaller than even normal) to see all the changes included in this release be sure to check out the release notes. And always be sure to check out the JUnit user guides for more in-depth information on how to write automated tests with JUnit 5.

To view the code used in this article, check out my github repo on JUnit5.

An Extended Discussion on Customization in JUnit 5

Inspiration often comes in twos for me. While reviewing a recent blog article, What’s New in JUnit 5.4, a colleague suggested I go into more depth on the usage of extensions in JUnit 5. Then in my twitter timeline I saw this from one of the core committers of the JUnit 5 framework:Screen Shot 2019-03-27 at 5.34.07 PM

Source: Twitter.

Later on in the thread, what was trying to be done with the “hack” could had been accomplished by creating a custom extension that’s available to the public.

The above tells me two things; there is a need for a deep dive on the JUnit 5 extension model and a need to explain the extendability aspect of the JUnit 5 framework. When I talk extendability, I’m specifically referring to the quality of being able to build on top of the existing framework that the JUnit team has provided in JUnit 5. Whereas hacks have often been the modus operandi for getting around the limits of frameworks (rather those limits were intentional or not!), the JUnit team went to great strides to make JUnit 5 extendable, and we’ll see in this series how to take advantage of that quality.

JUnit 5’s extension model and extensibility are by no means trivial subjects, so to make it more digestible, this will be a three part blog series. The subject of each blog article will look like this:

  1. Introduction to and using the JUnit 5 extension model
  2. The JUnit 5 extension lifecycle and building a custom extension
  3. Understanding and using extensibility in JUnit 5

In this article, we will take a high level overview of the extensions model from the perspective of a user of extensions; well learn why the extension model was introduced, how this improves upon what was in JUnit 4, the different ways to register an extension, and how to define the order of extension execution. 

The JUnit 5 Extension Model

JUnit 5 was a fundamental re-write and re-design of the JUnit framework. Some areas largely remained the same, though with a few enhancements, like assertions. Other areas were completely overhauled, which includes runner (@RunWith), MethodRule (@Rule), and TestRule (@ClassRule), being rolled into the new extension model.

The benefits of this overhaul can be experienced in a number of ways. A pretty obvious one is you can now declare multiple extensions at the class level whereas before you could only declare a single @RunWith:

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@ExtendWith(MockitoExtension.class)
public class TestSomeStuff{...
}

A bit more subtle, parameterized tests and normal tests can now co-exist in the same class:

public class ParameterizedAndNormalTestsLivingTogether{

   @Test
   pubic void aNormalTest(){
      ...
   }

   @ParameterizedTest
   @ValueSource(strings = { "val1", "val2" })
   public void aParameterizedTest(String val) {
   ...
   }
}

Note: @ParameterizedTest is built using the extension model

If you haven’t run into the constraints imposed by the previous Runner and Rule architecture, I can assure you it’s quite the painful experience when you do! So being able to register multiple extensions in the same test class or locate a parameterized test and normal test in the same test class are reasons to celebrate. But this is only just scratching the surface of the extension model, so let’s start going deeper.

Registering Extensions

There are three different ways to register an extension in JUnit 5: declaratively, programmatically, and automatically. Each way of registering an extension comes with specific rules, constraints, and benefits. Let’s step through the different types of ways to register extensions and understand when and why you might prefer using one method of the other.

Declaratively Registering Extensions

Extensions can be registered declaratively with an annotation at the class, method, or test interface level, and even with a composed annotation (which will be covered in-depth in the article on extendability). The code samples above are examples of registering extensions declaratively.

Declarative registering of extensions is probably the easiest way of registering an extension, which can be made even easier with a composed annotation. For example it is easier to remember how to write @ParameterizedTest when you want to declare a parameterized test than @ExtendWith(ParameterizedTestExtension.class).

As you are using an annotation to register an extension all the constraints with using annotations are there, such as only being able to pass static values to the extension. Also a test class cannot easily reference extensions that have been registered declaratively.

Programmatically Registering Extensions

Extensions can be registered programmatically with @RegisterExtension. There are a few rules regarding programmatically registered extensions. First, an extension field cannot be private. Second, the extension field cannot be null at time of evaluation. Finally an extension can either a static or instance field. A static extension has access to the BeforeAll, AfterAll, and TestIntancePostProcessor steps of the extension life cycle.

Registering a programmatic extension would look like this:

@RegisterExtension
SomeExtension extension = new SomeExtension();

Test classes have a much greater degree of freedom when interacting with a programmatically registered extension as they are just another field within the test class. This can be great for retrieving values out of an extension to verify expected behavior, passing values into the extension to manipulate its state at runtime, as well as other uses.

Automatically Registering Extensions

The final way to register an extension is with the Java Service Loader. The Java Service Loader can best be described as arcane, at least I generally get blank stares or looks of confusion when I bring it up. Though like many arcane things, it can be very powerful for both good and ill!

The Java Service Loader can be used to automatically register extensions within a test suite. This can be helpful as it allows certain behaviors to happen automatically when executing tests. The flip side to this, depending on the type of work that is occurring within the extension, this could have a non-trivial impact on your test suite runtime, it could also interfere in a non-obvious way with how a test behaves (the person executing the test might not realize the extension is being executed because it wasn’t registered locally). So to quote Uncle Ben:

remember-with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility

Registering an Automatic Extension

Registering an automatic extension is a more involved process than the other two ways, let’s quickly walk through the steps:

  1. Create a folder named META-INF on the base of your classpath
  2. Create a folder named services under META-INF
  3. Create a file named org.junit.jupiter.api.extension.Extension under services
  4. In org.junit.jupiter.api.extension.Extension add the fully qualified name of the extension you want registered, for example: my.really.cool.Extension
  5. Pass in -Djunit.jupiter.extensions.autodetection.enabled=true as a JVM argument (how to do this will vary based on your IDE)
    1. Configure your build file to automatically pass in the above argument. Here is an example using Surefire in maven:
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <properties>
            <configurationParameters>
               junit.jupiter.extensions.autodetection.enabled=true
            </configurationParameters>
        </properties>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

You can see a full example of the above here. Note META-INF is located under /src/test/resources.

Doing these steps every time you would want to use an automatic extension in a project is a bit involved, in the article on extendability we’ll take a look at how to make automatic extensions more practical to work with.

Ordering Extension Execution

As of JUnit 5.4 there are two ways to order how extensions are instantiated during the test cycle. Ordering extension execution could be useful in the realm of higher level tests; that is test above the unit test level. Integration tests, functional tests, feature tests, and other such similar tests might require complex setup and tear down steps.

Even for test code, it is still important to follow principles like single responsibility. If for example you have a feature test that verifies the behavior for when your application interacts with a database and cache, it would be better to locate the logic for setting up and tearing down the database in one extension and similar behavior for the cache in a separate extension, instead of putting all that behavior in a single extension. This allows for great reusability of each extension as well as making them easier to comprehend.

For all ways of ordering extension execution, the order of execution is inverted for “after steps”. So if you have three extensions named A, B, and C, each implementing the BeforeEach and AfterEach behavior, then going into a test method the execution order would be A -> B -> C, while the execution order leaving the test method would be C -> B -> A.

Order of Declaration

When registering an extension declaratively, the order of declaration within the test class is the order in which the extensions are registered and executed. Take the below example:

@ExtendWith(FirstExtension.class)
@ExtendWith(SecondExtension.class)
public class TestExtensionExecutionOrdering(){

   @ExtendWith(ThirdExtension.class)
   public void testExtensions(){
   }
}

When executing the test method testExtensions() the execution order going in would be FirstExtension -> SecondExtension -> ThirdExtension and going out of testExtensions() it would be ThirdExtension -> SecondExtension -> FirstExtension.

I haven’t personally used this feature a whole lot. I have a lot of confidence that, from a framework perspective, this feature behaves as designed. What I worry about however is the extent this feature would be understood by most developers and test engineers. In my experience, the order in which annotations are declared in a class or on a method is not something that developers and test engineers often think about or interact with. If this concern is ever surfaced, it’s often for stylistic reasons, for example; the shortest annotation should be declared first.

The good news is, is through the enhancements to extendibility that I mentioned in the introduction to this article, a custom annotation could be created and shared that includes the declaration of multiple extensions in their proper order. We will take a deeper look at custom annotations, and other examples of extensibility later in this series.

Ordering Programmatically Registered Extensions

Ordering extension registration and execution by order of declaration has been a feature of JUnit 5 since its initial release. With JUnit 5.4 programmatically registered extensions can also be executed in a manually defined order (programmatically registered extensions have always been executed in a consistent order, but it is “intentionally non-obvious”).

To define the execution order of a programmatically registered extension the annotation @Order(n) needs to be added to the declaration of the extension field. You do not need to add an annotation at class level like you would for ordering test methods to enable this behavior. However like when ordering test method execution, you do not need to order every extension. Extensions that do not have a defined execution order are executed after all extensions that do, following the “consistent, but intentionally non-obvious” process mentioned above. So in the below example:

public class TestClass{
   @RegisterExtension
   @Order(1)
   BaseExtension baseExtension = new BaseExtension();

   @RegisterExtension
   @Order(2)
   SecondaryExtension secondaryExtension = new SecondaryExtension();

   @RegisterExtension
   AuxillaryExtension secondaryExtension = new AuxillaryExtension();

   public void testExtensions(){
   }
}

BaseExtension is executed first, SecondaryExtension second, and AuxillaryExtension, and any other extension, executed after.

Also note that programmatically registered extensions will be executed after all extensions that have been registered declaratively and automatically. So aa programmatically registered extension with an annotated with @Order(1) may not be the first extension to be executed when running the test. So keep that in mind!

Conclusion

The new extensions model added a lot of much needed (and appreciated!) flexibility when it replaced the runner and rules architecture from JUnit 4. In the next article in the series we will take an in-depth look at the lifecycle of an extension and build our own custom extension!

The code used in this article, and series, can be found here.

Testcontainers, Bringing Sanity to Integration Testing

Writing and maintaining integration tests can be a difficult and frustrating experience, filled with a veritable minefield of things that could go wrong. For integration tests that connect to a remote resource you have issues of: the resource being down, datasets being changed or deleted, or heavy load causing tests to run slow. For integration tests that connect to a local resource you have the initial install and configuration of the resource on your local machine and the overhead of keeping your local instance in-sync with what the production instance looks like, otherwise you might run into this situation:Screen Shot 2019-03-25 at 8.12.34 AMSource: Minesweeper – The Movie

No application operates in isolation. Applications, even “monoliths”, depend on remote resources be it: databases, logging services, caches, or other applications to function. Just like the application we are maintaining will change over time as business needs and client demands change, so too will the resources it depends on. This necessitates a need to continually verify that our application can communicate with its dependent resources.

So to maintain development velocity and while having confidence our applications will function properly in production we need to write automated integration tests, however we need our integration tests to be:

  • Reliable – Test failures should only happen because a change occurred in either our application or the resource, not because the resource is down or misconfigured.
  • Portable – The tests should be able to run anywhere with minimal setup.
  • Accurate – The resource being used in the integration test should be an accurate representation of what exists in production.

How do we accomplish these requirements?

Introducing Testcontainers

Testcontainers is a Java library that integrates with JUnit to provide support for starting up and tearing down a Docker container within the lifecycle of a test or test class. Testcontainers is a project that was started about four years ago, and I first learned about back in 2017 when I was putting together a Pluralsight video on automated testing.

I have noticed an uptick in interest in Testcontainers in my twitter outline recently, and it doesn’t seem long ago that Testcontainers passed the 1K stars mark on their github repo, which now sits at 2.2K. If you haven’t started familiarizing yourself with Testcontainers now would definitely be a good time.

This rapid increase in popularity is likely the result of Testconainers being easy to use, and the flexibility of Docker containers, allowing Testcontainers to address a lot of integration testing use cases. In this article we are going to look at two approaches of how to use Testcontainers for running an integration test against a database. The code examples will be using JUnit 5, if you want to get familiar with JUnit 5, I have written a lot about it, you should also check out the JUnit 5 user docs.

Launching a Testcontainer via JDBC URL

In the example we will be writing an integration test for connecting to a Postgresql database, Testcontainers does offer support for a number of other databases. The first step will be brining in the appropriate dependencies. For this example we will only need to add the Postgresql Testcontainers dependency, to our maven build file (which in turns brings in the Testcontainers JDBC and core libraries).


<dependency>
<groupId>org.testcontainers</groupId>
<artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
<version>1.11.1</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

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testcontainers-postgres-dependency.xml

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Full maven build file for this project can be found here.

With the appropriate dependencies imported, let’s look at how to use Testcontainers to write a database integration test.

Full class, including imports, here.


@SpringJUnitConfig
@ContextConfiguration(classes = { StormTrackerApplication.class }, initializers = ITStormRepo.Initializer.class)
@TestPropertySource("classpath:application.properties")
@TestMethodOrder(OrderAnnotation.class)
public class ITStormRepo {
public static class Initializer implements ApplicationContextInitializer<ConfigurableApplicationContext> {
@Override
public void initialize(ConfigurableApplicationContext applicationContext) {
TestPropertyValues.of("spring.datasource.url=jdbc:tc:postgresql:11.2://arbitrary/arbitrary", //
"spring.datasource.username=test", //
"spring.datasource.password=test", //
"spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.testcontainers.jdbc.ContainerDatabaseDriver")//
.applyTo(applicationContext);
}
}
@Autowired
private StormRepo repo;
@Test
@Order(1)
public void testReadFromStormsTable() {
assertThat(repo.count()).isEqualTo(2);
}
@Test
public void testWriteToStormsTable() {
Storm savedStorm = repo.save(new Storm("03-17-2019", "03-20-2019", "South Atlantic", "Knoxville, Tennesee",
"Tropical Depression", 3));
assertThat(savedStorm.getId()).isEqualTo(12);
}
}

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ITStormRepo.java

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There is quite a bit going on, let’s breakdown what is happening in this class into more easily digestible bites.

@TestPropertySource("classpath:application.properties")

This isn’t really related to using Testcontainers, but since ApplicationContextInitializer (javadoc) isn’t super well known, but can also be really helpful when writing automated tests, I wanted to take a moment to show how to make it easier to work with when used in test classes.

Here I am telling the test class to bring in the properties defined in /src/test/main/application.properties (source). By bringing in the properties defined in application.properties, instead of having to define every property needed for connecting to the Testcontainers database, only the properties that are different for the tests in this class need to be overwritten. This reduces maintenance needs and helps with overall test accuracy as it is easier to keep a single properties file in-sync with what production looks like.

public static class Initializer implements ApplicationContextInitializer {
   @Override
   public void initialize(ConfigurableApplicationContext applicationContext) {
      TestPropertyValues.of("spring.datasource.url=jdbc:tc:postgresql:11.2://arbitrary/arbitrary", //
      "spring.datasource.username=arbitrary", //
      "spring.datasource.password=arbitrary", //
      "spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.testcontainers.jdbc.ContainerDatabaseDriver")//
      .applyTo(applicationContext);
   }
}

Within Initializer four properties are being defined (overwritten), and a few of them have somewhat odd looking values, let’s take a closer look. When initializing  Testcontainers via the JDBC URL, Testcontainers will set the username, password, hostname, and database name to what ever values you pass it. Strictly speaking spring.datasource.username and password don’t need to be included as they are defined in application.properties.  For spring.datasource.url, the JDBC URL must start with jdbc:tc:. The 11.2 refers to the specific image tag of postgres to be used, this however is optional and would default to 9.6.8 if left out. Lastly, spring.datasource.driver must be set to org.testcontainers.jdbc.ContainerDatabaseDriver. ContainerDatabaseDriver is Testcontainers’ “hook” into this test class. After starting up the container, ContainerDatabaseDriver will be substituted with the standard database driver, in this case org.postgresql.Driver. While in this example I am using the base postgres image in this example, you can use a custom image, so long as the database within the container is postgres (or of the type of database you have brought in a dependency for).

The rest of the test class is comparatively simple and straightforward. Simple read and writes are being performed to ensure fields are being properly mapped and the generated id matches the expected pattern.

Using Testcontainers as a Class Field

Above we looked at how to use Testcontainers via the JDBC URL hook. This can be a great when your use case is pretty simple, however the complexities of applications in the real world often mean a need for greater control and customization in behavior.

First step would be to bring in the Testcontainers junit-jupiter library.


@Testcontainers
@SpringJUnitConfig
@ContextConfiguration(classes = {
StormTrackerApplication.class }, initializers = ITStormRepoAlternate.Initializer.class)
@TestPropertySource("classpath:application.properties")
@TestMethodOrder(OrderAnnotation.class)
public class ITStormRepoAlternate {
@Container
private static PostgreSQLContainer container = new PostgreSQLContainer("postgres:11.2");//Can be an arbitrary image name and tag
public static class Initializer implements ApplicationContextInitializer<ConfigurableApplicationContext> {
@Override
public void initialize(ConfigurableApplicationContext applicationContext) {
TestPropertyValues.of("spring.datasource.url=" + container.getJdbcUrl(),
"spring.datasource.username=" + container.getUsername(),
"spring.datasource.password=" + container.getPassword(),
.applyTo(applicationContext);
}
}
@Autowired
private StormRepo repo;
@Test
@Order(1)
public void testReadFromStormsTable() {
assertThat(repo.count()).isEqualTo(2);
}
@Test
public void testWriteToStormsTable() {
Storm savedStorm = repo.save(new Storm("03-17-2019", "03-20-2019", "South Atlantic", "Knoxville, Tennesee",
"Tropical Depression", 3));
assertThat(savedStorm.getId()).isEqualTo(12);
}
}

view raw

ITStormRepoAlternate.java

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There are a lot of similarities with the previous code example, so lets focuses only on the differences.

At the top of the test class, is the @TestContainers annotation. This brings in the Testcontainers extension into the class which scans for fields annotated with @Container such as in this case PostgreSQLContainer container. A @Container field can be either static or an instance field. Static containers are started only once and are shared between test methods, instances containers are started and stopped for each test method.

@Container
private static PostgreSQLContainer container = new PostgreSQLContainer("storm_tracker_db:latest");

Here the container that will be used in this test class is defined. Like with the JDBC URL method, you are not required to use a base postgresql image, in this case the customer image “storm_tracker_db” is being used (the Dockerfile for this image is here). As long as the database within the container is postgres, you are fine. While not much additional customization is being done to the container in this class. Testcontainers does offer a number of options such as: executing commands, setting a volume mapping, or accessing container logs, among others. Be sure to check the documentation under features and modules for what is available, as well as the javadoc (v1.11.1).

These additional features provided when using a Testcontainer as a class field allow for flexibility in putting the container within a specific state for a test, easily switching the datasets to be used in a test, or being able to view the internals of container to verify expected behavior.

An additional benefit of using a Testcontainer as a class field is the ability to reference values from the container in use. In Initializer I am using container to populate the JDBC URL (container<span class="pl-k">.</span>getJdbcUrl()), username, and password properties for the Spring test application context. By default when using PostgreSQLContainer the username and password are both “test”, so we don’t really need to pull these values from the container, however the JDBC URL is dynamic. Being able to pull values from a container and pass them in to the application context for a Spring test, helps to increase the flexibility when using Testcontainers. Without this, you might have to use pre-defined ports, IPs, or other values, which might run into trouble when the tests are being executed on a build server.

Conclusions

I’m excited to see how much Testcontainers has grown both as a project and in interest from the community from when I first started using it. I have often struggled when writing integration tests, having to deal with either flickering tests, or the overhead of install and maintain a local resource. Neither are pleasant experiences. Testcontainers brought sanity in my life to the difficult task of writing integration tests.

The code used in this article can be found here.

Why You Should Start Injecting Mocks as Method Arguments

One of the big improvements that came in JUnit 5 was support for dependency injection via constructors and methods. Since the release of JUnit 5 in September 2017, third-party libraries, like mockito, have started providing native support for constructor and method injection. In this article we will take a quick look at how to use constructor and method injection with mockito and then look at why you should start injecting mocks as method arguments in your automated tests.

How to Inject a Mock as an Argument

Starting with 2.21.0, current version 2.25.0, mockito has provided support for injecting mocks as both constructor and method arguments. Let’s looks at how you can start using dependency injection with mockito.

In your test class you will need to annotate it with @ExtendWith(MockitoExtension.class). Then for any arguments you would like mockito to provide a mock for, you simply annotate the argument with @Mock. Here is an example of using mockito dependency injection in action:


@ExtendWith(MockitoExtension.class)
public class TestMockitoInjection {
private BoringService service;
public TestMockitoInjection(@Mock BoringService service) {
this.service = service;
}
@Test
public void testConstructorInjectedValue() {
when(service.returnNumber()).thenReturn(2);
assertEquals(2, service.returnNumber());
}
@Test
public void testMethodInjection(@Mock BoringService service) {
when(service.returnNumber()).thenReturn(3);
assertEquals(3, service.returnNumber());
}
public class BoringService {
public int returnNumber() {
return 1;
}
}
}

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TestMockitoInjection.java

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Pretty simple and straight forward. Let’s now look at why you should start using method injection of mocks.

The Case for Injecting Mocks as Method Arguments

There are three major benefits that come from automated testing: speed, repeatability, and auditability. The first two are pretty well understood benefits of automated testing, auditability however is if not less well understood, definitely less often discussed. Auditability, within the context of automated testing, refers to the quality of being able to see what code has been tested and the intent of the test.

Code coverage can be achieved without spending much time thinking about how other people, developers, test engineers, business analyst, etc, might use automated tests to understand (i.e. audit) the system the tests are covering. Tests with names like testSuccess, testFail, testFail2, can be executed just fine, but do little to communicate their intent. For an automated test suite to be properly auditable, tests names need to clearly convey the intent of what behavior is being tested. While a test with a name of testRollbackAddUserAddressValidationError​ is a bit of a mouth full, it pretty clearly describes what scenario the test is covering.

While testRollbackAddUserAddressValidationError()​ provides intent, to understand the scope of the test, what dependencies the code under test interacts with, it would require inspecting the code within the test case itself. However we can begin to communicate scope by injecting mocks as method arguments. If we were to do that with the above test we will would have testRollbackAddUserAddressValidationError(@Mock UserDao userDao). Now just from reading the signature of the test case we can determine that the scope of the test also includes interacting with the UserDao class.

When executing tests as a group, we can better see the benefits of injecting mocks as method arguments. Below is an example of running two test classes performing the same set of tests, but one is using mocks at the class level, while the other is using method injection. From the JUnit report alone, we can understand that UserService depends upon the UserDao and AddressDao classes.

Screen Shot 2019-03-12 at 11.20.15 AM.png

Note: Another new feature in JUnit 5 are nested tests, which is being used here.

Conclusion

Injecting mocks as method arguments isn’t game changing, but it can help make tests easier to read, and thus audit, thru being able to communicate in the signature the scope of the test. While there will be instance where passing a mock in as a method argument isn’t practical, generally that should be rare*, and so hopefully this article encourages you to generally use method injection when you are working with mocks.

The code used in this article can be found in this gist, and also this repo.

* Complex mock setup should be seen as a smell that either (or all) the mock, the test, or the code under test has too many responsibilities

Handling and Verifying Exceptions in JUnit 5

JUnit 5 offers a number of improvements over JUnit 4. In this article we will take a quick look at how exceptions are handled and verified in JUnit 4, and then see how the new assertThrows() in JUnit 5 improves the usability and readability when catching and verifying exceptions.

Handling and Verifying Exceptions in JUnit 4

In JUnit 4 there are two primary ways of handling exceptions. The most commonly used method is with the expected field in @Test. An alternative way of handling exceptions is by using a @Rule and ExpectedException. Below are examples of both: 


public class TestHandleExceptionsJUnit4 {
@Rule
public ExpectedException expectedException = ExpectedException.none();
@Test(expected = SpecificException.class)
public void testSpecificExceptionHandling() throws SpecificException {
onlyThrowsExceptions();
}
@Test(expected = Exception.class)//Passes because Exception is super type of SpecificException
public void testExceptionHandling() throws SpecificException {
onlyThrowsExceptions();
}
@Test(expected = SpecificException.class)
public void testExceptionHandlingVerifyExceptionFields() throws SpecificException {
try {
onlyThrowsExceptions();
} catch (SpecificException e) {
assertEquals("An exception was thrown!", e.getMessage());
throw e;
}
}
@Test
public void testUseExpectedException() throws SpecificException {
expectedException.expect(SpecificException.class);
expectedException.expectMessage("An exception was thrown!");
onlyThrowsExceptions();
}
@Test
public void testUseExpectedExceptionWithSuperType() throws SpecificException {
expectedException.expect(Exception.class);//Passes because Exception is super type of SpecificException
expectedException.expectMessage("An exception was thrown!");
onlyThrowsExceptions();
}
public void onlyThrowsExceptions() throws SpecificException {
throw new SpecificException("An exception was thrown!");
}
public class SpecificException extends Exception {
public SpecificException(String message) {
super(message);
}
}
}

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TestHandleExceptionsJUnit4.java

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While both methods are capable of catching and verifying exceptions, each have issues that impact their usability and readability. Let’s step through some of these issues with expected and ExpectedException.

When using expected,  not only are you putting some of the assertion behavior into the definition of the test case, verifying fields within the thrown exception is a bit clunky. To verify the fields of an exception you’d have to add a try/catch within the test case, and within the catch block perform the additional assertions and then throw the caught exception.

When using ExpectedException you have to initially declare it with ​none(), no exception expected, which is a bit confusing. Within a test case you define the expected behavior before the method under test. This would be similar to if you were using a mock, but it’s not intuitive as a thrown exception is a “returned” value, not a dependency nor internal to the code under test.

These oddities significantly impacted the usability and readability of test cases in JUnit 4 that verified exception behavior. The latter is by no means a trivial problem as “easy to read” is probably one of, if not the, most import characteristics of test code. So it is not surprising then that exception handling behavior was heavily rewritten in JUnit 5.

Introducing assertThrows()

In JUnit 5, the above two methods of handling and verifying exceptions have been rolled into the much more straightforward and easier to use assertThrows(). assertThrows() requires two arguments, Class <T> and Executable, assertThrows() can also take an optional third argument of either String or Supplier<String> which can be used for providing a custom error message if the assertion fails. assertThrows() returns the thrown exception, which allows for further inspection and verification of the fields within the thrown exception.

Below is an example of assertThrows() in action:


public class TestHandleExceptionsJUnit5 {
@Test
public void testExceptionHandling() {
Exception e = assertThrows(SpecificException.class, () -> onlyThrowsExceptions());
assertEquals("An exception was thrown!", e.getMessage());
}
@Test
public void testExceptionHandlingFailWrongExceptionType() {
assertThrows(Exception.class, () -> doesntThrowExceptions(), "Wrong exception type thrown!");
}
@Test
public void testExceptionHandlingFailNoExceptionThrown() {
assertThrows(SpecificException.class, () -> doesntThrowExceptions(), "An exception wasn't thrown!");
}
public void onlyThrowsExceptions() throws SpecificException {
throw new SpecificException("An exception was thrown!");
}
public void doesntThrowExceptions() {
//do nothing
}
public class SpecificException extends Exception{
public SpecificException(String message) {
super(message);
}
}
}

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TestHandleExceptionsJUnit5.java

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As can be seen in the above, assertThrows()  is much cleaner and easier to use than either method in JUnit 4. Let’s take a bit closer look at assertThrows() and some of its  more subtle improvements as well.

The second argument, the Executable is where the requirement of Java 8 in JUnit 5 starts to show its benefits. Executable is a functional interface, which allows for, with the use of a lambda, directly executing the code under test within the declaration of assertThrows(). This makes it not only easier to check for if an exception thrown, but also allows assertThrows() to return the thrown exception so additional verification can be done.

Conclusion

assertThrows() offers significant improvements to usability and readability when verifying exception behavior for code under test. This is consistent with many of the changes made in JUnit 5, which have made the writing and reading of tests easier. If you haven’t yet made the switch to JUnit 5, I hope this seeing the improvements in exception handling and verification helps to build the case for making the switch.

The code used in this article can be found here: https://github.com/wkorando/junit-5-simple-demonstrator.

EDIT: An earlier version of this blog said that assertThrows()​ doesn’t support exception subtypes, that is incorrect.