JUnit 4: Set up things in a test suite before tests are run (like a test's @BeforeClass method, just for a test suite)

Question

I want to do some functional testing on a (restful) webservice. The testsuite contains a bunch of test cases, each of which performs a couple of HTTP requests on the webserv

Answer 1

As an aside, it's a bad idea to have unit tests actually calling external resources like webservices, databases, etc.

Unit tests should be super-quick to run and a delay of 'a couple of minutes' for each run of the suite will mean it won't be run as much as it should.

My advice:

Look at mocking external dependencies in unit tests with something like EasyMock (http://www.easymock.org/).

Build a seperate suite of integration tests with something like Fitnesse (http://fitnesse.org/) or a homegrown solution that runs against a test environment and which is continually up.

Answer 2

One option is to use something like Apache Ant to launch your unit test suite. You can then put a target invocation before and after your junit target to start and stop your webservice:

<target name="start.webservice"><!-- starts the webservice... --></target>
<target name="stop.webservice"><!-- stops the webservice... --></target>
<target name="unit.test"><!-- just runs the tests... --></target>

<target name="run.test.suite" 
        depends="start.webservice, unit.test, stop.webservice"/>

You then run your suite using ant (or your integration tool of choice). Most IDEs have Ant support, and it makes it much easier to move your tests into a continous integration environment (many of which use Ant targets to define their own tests).

Answer 3

The answer is now to create a @ClassRule within your suite. The rule will be invoked before or after (depending on how you implement it) each test class is run. There are a few different base classes you can extend/implement. What is nice about class rules is that if you do not implement them as anonymous classes then you can reuse the code!

Here is an article about them: http://java.dzone.com/articles/junit-49-class-and-suite-level-rules

Here is some sample code to illustrate their use. Yes, it is trivial, but it should illustrate the life-cycle well enough for you to get started.

First the suite definition:

import org.junit.*;
import org.junit.rules.ExternalResource;
import org.junit.runners.Suite;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;


@RunWith( Suite.class )
@Suite.SuiteClasses( { 
    RuleTest.class,
} )
public class RuleSuite{

    private static int bCount = 0;
    private static int aCount = 0;

    @ClassRule
    public static ExternalResource testRule = new ExternalResource(){
            @Override
            protected void before() throws Throwable{
                System.err.println( "before test class: " + ++bCount );
                sss = "asdf";
            };

            @Override
            protected void after(){
                System.err.println( "after test class: " + ++aCount );
            };
        };


    public static String sss;
}

And now the test class definition:

import static org.junit.Assert.*;

import org.junit.ClassRule;
import org.junit.Rule;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.rules.ExternalResource;

public class RuleTest {

    @Test
    public void asdf1(){
        assertNotNull( "A value should've been set by a rule.", RuleSuite.sss );
    }

    @Test
    public void asdf2(){
        assertEquals( "This value should be set by the rule.", "asdf", RuleSuite.sss );
    }
}

Answer 4

jUnit can't do that sort of thing -- though TestNG does have @BeforeSuite and @AfterSuite annotations. Normally, you get your build system to do it. In maven, there are the "pre-integration-test" and "post-integration-test" phases. In ANT, well you just add the steps to the task.

Your question is pretty much a dup of Before and After Suite execution hook in jUnit 4.x, so I'd take a look at the suggestions over there.