40.4 Test utilities

A few test utility classes are packaged as part of spring-boot that are generally useful when testing your application.

40.4.1 ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer

ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer is an ApplicationContextInitializer that can apply to your tests to load Spring Boot application.properties files. You can use this when you don’t need the full features provided by @SpringBootTest.

@ContextConfiguration(classes = Config.class,
    initializers = ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer.class)

	Note
Using ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer alone won’t provide support for @Value("${…​}") injection. Its only job is to ensure that application.properties files are loaded into Spring’s Environment. For @Value support you need to either additionally configure a PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer or use @SpringBootTest where one will be auto-configured for you.

40.4.2 EnvironmentTestUtils

EnvironmentTestUtils allows you to quickly add properties to a ConfigurableEnvironment or ConfigurableApplicationContext. Simply call it with key=value strings:

EnvironmentTestUtils.addEnvironment(env, "org=Spring", "name=Boot");

40.4.3 OutputCapture

OutputCapture is a JUnit Rule that you can use to capture System.out and System.err output. Simply declare the capture as a @Rule then use toString() for assertions:

import org.junit.Rule;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.springframework.boot.test.rule.OutputCapture;

import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.*;
import static org.junit.Assert.*;

public class MyTest {

    _@Rule_
    public OutputCapture capture = new OutputCapture();

    _@Test_
    public void testName() throws Exception {
        System.out.println("Hello World!");
        assertThat(capture.toString(), containsString("World"));
    }

}

40.4.4 TestRestTemplate

TestRestTemplate is a convenience alternative to Spring’s RestTemplate that is useful in integration tests. You can get a vanilla template or one that sends Basic HTTP authentication (with a username and password). In either case the template will behave in a test-friendly way: not following redirects (so you can assert the response location), ignoring cookies (so the template is stateless), and not throwing exceptions on server-side errors. It is recommended, but not mandatory, to use Apache HTTP Client (version 4.3.2 or better), and if you have that on your classpath the TestRestTemplate will respond by configuring the client appropriately.

public class MyTest {

    private TestRestTemplate template = new TestRestTemplate();

    _@Test_
    public void testRequest() throws Exception {
        HttpHeaders headers = template.getForEntity("http://myhost.com", String.class).getHeaders();
        assertThat(headers.getLocation().toString(), containsString("myotherhost"));
    }

}

If you are using the @SpringBootTest annotation with WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT or WebEnvironment.DEFINED_PORT, you can just inject a fully configured TestRestTemplate and start using it. If necessary, additional customizations can be applied via the RestTemplateBuilder bean:

_@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)_
_@SpringBootTest_
public class MyTest {

    _@Autowired_
    private TestRestTemplate template;

    _@Test_
    public void testRequest() throws Exception {
        HttpHeaders headers = template.getForEntity("http://myhost.com", String.class).getHeaders();
        assertThat(headers.getLocation().toString(), containsString("myotherhost"));
    }

    _@TestConfiguration_
    static class Config {

        _@Bean_
        public RestTemplateBuilder restTemplateBuilder() {
            return new RestTemplateBuilder()
                .additionalMessageConverters(...)
                .customizers(...);
        }

    }

}