How do you assert that a certain exception is thrown in JUnit 4 tests?

Question

How can I use JUnit4 idiomatically to test that some code throws an exception?

While I can certainly do something like this:

@Test
public void testFo         


        

Answer 1

IMHO, the best way to check for exceptions in JUnit is the try/catch/fail/assert pattern:

// this try block should be as small as possible,
// as you want to make sure you only catch exceptions from your code
try {
    sut.doThing();
    fail(); // fail if this does not throw any exception
} catch(MyException e) { // only catch the exception you expect,
                         // otherwise you may catch an exception for a dependency unexpectedly
    // a strong assertion on the message, 
    // in case the exception comes from anywhere an unexpected line of code,
    // especially important if your checking IllegalArgumentExceptions
    assertEquals("the message I get", e.getMessage()); 
}

The assertTrue might be a bit strong for some people, so assertThat(e.getMessage(), containsString("the message"); might be preferable.