SpringRunner tutorial
last modified October 18, 2023
SpringRunner tutorial shows how to test Spring applications with SpringRunner.
Spring is a popular Java application framework. In the tutorial, we use Spring 5 version.
SpringRunner
SpringRunner is an alias for the SpringJUnit4ClassRunner, which
joins JUnit testing library with the Spring TestContext Framework.
We use it with @RunWith(SpringRunner.class).
With SpringRunner, we can implement standard JUnit 4-based unit and integration tests.
The Spring TestContext Framework provides generic, annotation-driven unit and integration testing support that is agnostic of the testing framework in use (JUnit, TestNG).
SpringRunner example
In the following application we test a simple service with SprigRunner.
The application is a Spring standalone console application.
The application contains two property files: one file is for the production application, the other one for testing.
pom.xml
src
├───main
│ ├───java
│ │ └───com
│ │ └───zetcode
│ │ │ Application.java
│ │ ├───config
│ │ │ AppConfig.java
│ │ └───service
│ │ HelloService.java
│ └───resources
│ application.properties
│ logback.xml
└───test
├───java
│ └───com
│ └───zetcode
│ └───service
│ HelloServiceTest.java
└───resources
appTest.properties
This is the project structure.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.zetcode</groupId>
<artifactId>springrunnerex</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
<spring-version>5.3.23</spring-version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
<artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
<version>1.4.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
<version>${spring-version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
<version>${spring-version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
<version>${spring-version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hamcrest</groupId>
<artifactId>hamcrest-all</artifactId>
<version>1.3</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>4.12</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1.0</version>
<configuration>
<mainClass>com.zetcode.Application</mainClass>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
This is the Maven build file. We have the following dependencies: logback-classic
for logging, spring-context and spring-core are basic Spring
dependencies, spring-test is for testing, hamcrest-all contains
all modules for the Hamcrest matching library, and JUnit is the library
for unit testing.
The exec-maven-plugin helps execute system and Java programs.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<logger name="org.springframework" level="ERROR"/>
<logger name="com.zetcode" level="INFO"/>
<appender name="consoleAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
<encoder>
<Pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} %blue(%-5level) %magenta(%logger{36}) - %msg %n
</Pattern>
</encoder>
</appender>
<root>
<level value="INFO" />
<appender-ref ref="consoleAppender" />
</root>
</configuration>
The logback.xml is a configuration file for the Logback logging library.
app.message=Hello there!
The application.properties contains one message property, which is
displayed by the HelloMessage service.
package com.zetcode.config;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.PropertySource;
@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.zetcode")
@PropertySource("application.properties")
public class AppConfig {
}
AppConfig configures component scanning and loads properties from
the provided file.
package com.zetcode.service;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
@Service
public class HelloService {
@Value("${app.message}")
private String message;
public String sayHello() {
return message;
}
}
HelloService returns a message retrieved from the application.properties
file.
package com.zetcode;
import com.zetcode.config.AppConfig;
import com.zetcode.service.HelloService;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component
public class Application {
private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Application.class);
public static void main(String[] args) {
var ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);
var app = ctx.getBean(Application.class);
app.run();
ctx.close();
}
@Autowired
private HelloService helloService;
private void run() {
logger.info("Calling hello service");
logger.info(helloService.sayHello());
}
}
The application prints a message to the console using HelloService.
$ mvn -q exec:java 17:50:54.118 INFO com.zetcode.Application - Calling hello service 17:50:54.118 INFO com.zetcode.Application - Hello there!
We run the application.
app.message=Testing hello message
The appTest.properties is specific for the testing.
package com.zetcode.service;
import com.zetcode.config.AppConfig;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.TestPropertySource;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringRunner;
import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.equalTo;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;
@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes={HelloService.class})
@TestPropertySource("/appTest.properties")
public class HelloServiceTest {
@Value("${app.message}")
private String message;
@Autowired
private HelloService helloService;
@Test
public void testHelloMessage() {
var message = helloService.sayHello();
assertThat(message, equalTo(message));
}
}
HelloServiceTest is used for testing the HelloService class.
@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes={HelloService.class})
@TestPropertySource("/appTest.properties")
public class HelloServiceTest {
The test class is annotated with @RunWith(SpringRunner.class).
The @ContextConfiguration defines class-level metadata which is used to
determine how to load and configure an application context for integration tests.
In addition, we provide custom test property file with @TestPropertySource.
@Value("${app.message}")
private String message;
We inject the message from the appTest.properties file.
@Autowired private HelloService helloService;
We inject the HelloMessage service class. This is the class to
be tested.
@Test
public void testHelloMessage() {
var message = helloService.sayHello();
assertThat(message, equalTo(message));
}
We test that the message from the service method equals to the injected string value.
$ mvn -q test
-------------------------------------------------------
T E S T S
-------------------------------------------------------
Running com.zetcode.service.HelloServiceTest
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.489 sec
Results :
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
We run the tests.
In this article we shown how to use SpringRunner to create tests
in a Spring application.
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