Test a specific exception type is thrown AND the exception has the right properties

Question

I want to test that MyException is thrown in a certain case. EXPECT_THROW is good here. But I also want to check the exception has a specific state

Answer 1

I like most of the answers. However, since it seems that GoogleTest provides EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT that helps facilitating this, I'd like to add this option to the list of answers:

MyExceptionCreatingClass testObject; // implements TriggerMyException()

EXPECT_PRED_FORMAT2(ExceptionChecker, testObject, "My_Expected_Exception_Text");

where ExceptionChecker is defined as:

testing::AssertionResult ExceptionChecker(const char* aExpr1,
                                          const char* aExpr2,
                                          MyExceptionCreatingClass& aExceptionCreatingObject,
                                          const char* aExceptionText)
{
  try
  {
    aExceptionCreatingObject.TriggerMyException();
    // we should not get here since we expect an exception
    return testing::AssertionFailure() << "Exception '" << aExceptionText << "' is not thrown.";
  }
  catch (const MyExpectedExceptionType& e)
  {
    // expected this, but verify the exception contains the correct text
    if (strstr(e.what(), aExceptionText) == static_cast(NULL))
    {
      return testing::AssertionFailure()
          << "Exception message is incorrect. Expected it to contain '"
          << aExceptionText << "', whereas the text is '" << e.what() << "'.\n";
    }
  }
  catch ( ... )
  {
    // we got an exception alright, but the wrong one...
    return testing::AssertionFailure() << "Exception '" << aExceptionText
    << "' not thrown with expected type 'MyExpectedExceptionType'.";
  }
  return testing::AssertionSuccess();
}