Tag: maven

Integration tests with Maven and JUnit

There is no doubt that integration tests phase is crucial in modern applications development. We need to test behaviour of our subsystems and how they interact with other modules. Using JUnit and Maven it's quite easy to create integration tests and run them in separate phase than unit test. It is very important, because integration tests tend to take much more time than unit ones because they work with database, network connections, other subsystems etc. Therefore, we want to run them more rarely. With JUnit in version >= 4.8 there are two approaches for creating and running integration test:
  • using naming conventions and specifying separate executions for maven-surefire plugin
  • create marking interface and mark integration tests with @Category annotation and run test from failsafe-plugin (although it is possible to use surefire in both cases)
 

Separate executions

First method needs naming convention like naming all unit tests with "..Test.java" postfix (or "..Spec.groovy" ;) and integration tests with "..IntegrationTest.java". Then we need to change maven surefire configuration: 
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.15</version>
    <configuration>
        <skip>true</skip>    
    </configuration>
</plugin>
What I did here is forcing maven to skip default test phase. Instead of that, I will configure two separate executions (just below the <configuration> section): 
<executions>
    <execution>
        <id>unit-tests</id>
        <phase>test</phase>
        <goals>
            <goal>test</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
            <skip>false</skip>
            <includes>
                <include>**/*Test.class</include>
                <include>**/*Spec.class</include>
            </includes>
            <excludes>
                <exclude>**/*IntegrationTest.class</exclude>
            </excludes>
        </configuration>
    </execution>
    <execution>
        <id>integration-tests</id>
        <phase>integration-test</phase>
        <goals>
            <goal>test</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
            <skip>false</skip>
            <includes>
                <include>**/*IntegrationTest.class</include>
            </includes>
        </configuration>
    </execution>
</executions>
In unit test execution I include all test that match naming convention for unit tests (both JUnit and spock ones) and exclude files matching integration test pattern and in integration test execution I did something opposite ;)

Annotations

Another method requires defining of marking interface like this: 
package info.rnowak.webtex.common.test;

public interface IntegrationTest {

}
Then we can mark our integration test class with: 
@Category(IntegrationTest.class)
Next thing is changing of surefire plugin configuration to omit integration test: 
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.15</version>
    <configuration>
        <includes>
            <include>**/*Test.class</include>
            <include>**/*Spec.class</include>
        </includes>  
        <excludedGroups>info.rnowak.webtex.common.test.IntegrationTest</excludedGroups> 
    </configuration>
</plugin>
What has changed here is new <excludedGroups> tag with name of interface which marks our integration tests. Next, we need to add and configure maven-failsafe plugin in order to run test from out integration test group: 
<plugin><plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.15</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>integration-test</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <groups>info.rnowak.webtex.common.test.IntegrationTest</groups>
                <includes>
                    <include>**/*.class</include>
                </includes>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>
With this configuration failsafe will run only test marked with @Category(IntegrationTest.class) annotation, no matter what their names are.

What is better?

Well, in my opinion it's just a matter of taste and style. Annotating each integration class may be a little cumbersome but we are not limited to naming classes within specified convention. On the other hand, unit test and integration test usually are named with some convention, so annotations are not a big deal.

Spock, Java and Maven

Few months ago I've came across Groovy - powerful language for JVM platform which combines the power of Java with abilities typical for scripting languages (dynamic typing, metaprogramming).
Together with Groovy I've discovered spock framework (https://code.google.com/p/spock/) - specification framework for Groovy (of course you can test Java classes too!). But spock is not only test/specification framework - it also contains powerful mocking tools.
Even though spock is dedicated for Groovy there is no problem with using it for Java classes tests. In this post I'm going to describe how to configure Maven project to build and run spock specifications together with traditional JUnit tests.
Firstly, we need to prepare pom.xml and add necessary dependencies and plugins.
Two obligatory libraries are:
<dependency>
    <groupid>org.spockframework</groupId>
    <artifactid>spock-core</artifactId>
    <version>0.7-groovy-2.0</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupid>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
    <artifactid>groovy-all</artifactId>
    <version>${groovy.version}</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
Where groovy.version is property defined in pom.xml for more convenient use and easy version change, just like this: 
<properties>
    <gmaven-plugin.version>1.4</gmaven-plugin.version>
    <groovy.version>2.1.5</groovy.version>
</properties>
 
I've added property for gmaven-plugin version for the same reason ;)
Besides these two dependencies, we can use few additional ones providing extra functionality:
  • cglib - for class mocking
  • objenesis - enables mocking classes without default constructor
To add them to the project put these lines in <dependencies> section of pom.xml:
<dependency>
    <groupid>cglib</groupId>
    <artifactid>cglib-nodep</artifactId>
    <version>3.0</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupid>org.objenesis</groupId>
    <artifactid>objenesis</artifactId>
    <version>1.3</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
 
And that's all for dependencies section. Now we will focus on plugins necessary to compile Groovy classes. We need to add gmaven-plugin with gmaven-runtime-2.0 dependency in plugins section:
<plugin>
    <groupid>org.codehaus.gmaven</groupId>
    <artifactid>gmaven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${gmaven-plugin.version}</version>
    <configuration>
        <providerselection>2.0</providerSelection>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>compile</goal>
                <goal>testCompile</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupid>org.codehaus.gmaven.runtime</groupId>
            <artifactid>gmaven-runtime-2.0</artifactId>
            <version>${gmaven-plugin.version}</version>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupid>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
                    <artifactid>groovy-all</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupid>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
            <artifactid>groovy-all</artifactId>
            <version>${groovy.version}</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</plugin>
 
With these configuration we can use spock and write our first specifications. But there is one issue: default settings for maven-surefire plugin demand that test classes must end with "..Test" postfix, which is ok when we want to use such naming scheme for our spock tests. But if we want to name them like CommentSpec.groovy or whatever with "..Spec" ending (what in my opinion is much more readable) we need to make little change in surefire plugin configuration:
<plugin>
    <groupid>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactid>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.15</version>
    <configuration>
        <includes>
            <include>**/*Test.java</include>
            <include>**/*Spec.java</include>
        </includes>
    </configuration>
</plugin>
 
As you can see there is a little trick ;) We add include directive for standard Java JUnit test ending with "..Test" postfix, but there is also an entry for spock test ending with "..Spec". And there is a trick: we must write "**/*Spec.java", not "**/*Spec.groovy", otherwise Maven will not run spock tests (which is strange and I've spent some time to figure out why Maven can't run my specs). Little update: instead of "*.java" postfix for both types of tests we can write "*.class" what is in my opinion more readable and clean: 
<include>**/*Test.class</include>
<include>**/*Spec.class</include>
(thanks to Tomek Pęksa for pointing this out!)
With such configuration, we can write either traditional JUnit test and put them in src/test/java directory or groovy spock specifications and place them in src/test/groovy. And both will work together just fine :) In one of my next posts I'll write something about using spock and its mocking abilities in practice, so stay in tune.