In Java how can I validate a thrown exception with JUnit?

Question

When writing unit tests for a Java API there may be circumstances where you want to perform more detailed validation of an exception. I.e. more than is offered by the @t

Answer 1

The following helper method (adapted from this blog post) does the trick:

/**
 * Run a test body expecting an exception of the
 * given class and with the given message.
 *
 * @param test              To be executed and is expected to throw the exception.
 * @param expectedException The type of the expected exception.
 * @param expectedMessage   If not null, should be the message of the expected exception.
 * @param expectedCause     If not null, should be the same as the cause of the received exception.
 */
public static void expectException(
        Runnable test,
        Class expectedException,
        String expectedMessage,
        Throwable expectedCause) {
    try {
        test.run();
    }
    catch (Exception ex) {
        assertSame(expectedException, ex.getClass());
        if (expectedMessage != null) {
            assertEquals(expectedMessage, ex.getMessage());
        }

        if (expectedCause != null) {
            assertSame(expectedCause, ex.getCause());
        }

        return;
    }

    fail("Didn't find expected exception of type " + expectedException.getName());
}

The test code can then invoke this as follows:

TestHelper.expectException(
        new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                classInstanceBeingTested.methodThatThrows();
            }
        },
        WrapperException.class,
        "Exception Message",
        causeException
);