How to check String in response body with mockMvc

Question

I have simple integration test

@Test
public void shouldReturnErrorMessageToAdminWhenCreatingUserWithUsedUserName()          


        

Answer 1

Reading these answers, I can see a lot relating to Spring version 4.x, I am using version 3.2.0 for various reasons. So things like json support straight from the content() is not possible.

I found that using MockMvcResultMatchers.jsonPath is really easy and works a treat. Here is an example testing a post method.

The bonus with this solution is that you're still matching on attributes, not relying on full json string comparisons.

(Using org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers)

String expectedData = "some value";
mockMvc.perform(post("/endPoint")
                .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
                .content(mockRequestBodyAsString.getBytes()))
                .andExpect(status().isOk())
                .andExpect(MockMvcResultMatchers.jsonPath("$.data").value(expectedData));

The request body was just a json string, which you can easily load from a real json mock data file if you wanted, but I didnt include that here as it would have deviated from the question.

The actual json returned would have looked like this:

{
    "data":"some value"
}