Using Session/Request-Scoped SpringBeans in TestNG

Today i will show you how to use spring-beans (especially session-scoped respectively request-scoped) in Unittests.

First of all … its easy to use a singleton bean (no scope) in a unit-test, load the ClassPathXmlApplicationContext with configLocations, use getBean(„name“) and then use the returned objects.

But if you want use a enhanced (J2EE) spring-configuration in your unit-test you have to use the XmlWebApplicationContext.

Lets use a simple example! Imagine you have different context-files, e.g. spring-beans-application.xml:

  <bean id="Foobar1" class="de.ahoehma.test.Foobar" scope="request"/>
  <bean id="Foobar2" class="de.ahoehma.test.Foobar" scope="session"/>
  <bean id="Foobar3" class="de.ahoehma.test.Foobar" />

Then you have your unit-test:

public class SpringBeansTestNg {

  //
  // XXX we have to define all spring-context-files - later this could be done via test-ng-provider or
  //     via spring with "spring-beans-*.xml" (i try it but it doesnt work)
  //
  private final String[] contextLocations = new String[]{
      "spring-beans-application.xml",
      "spring-beans-services.xml",
      "spring-beans-persistence.xml",
      "spring-beans-security.xml",};

  private ApplicationContext applicationContext;

  @BeforeTest
  private void loadApplicationContext() {
    final XmlWebApplicationContext xmlApplicationContext = new XmlWebApplicationContext();
    xmlApplicationContext.setConfigLocations(contextLocations);
    final MockServletContext servletContext = new MockServletContext("");
    xmlApplicationContext.setServletContext(servletContext);
    final RequestContextListener requestContextListener = new RequestContextListener();
    final MockHttpServletRequest request = new MockHttpServletRequest(servletContext);
    final ServletRequestEvent requestEvent = new ServletRequestEvent(servletContext, request);
    requestContextListener.requestInitialized(requestEvent);
    xmlApplicationContext.refresh();
    applicationContext = xmlApplicationContext;
  }

  /**
   * @return request scoped bean
   */
  private Foobar getFoobar1() {
    return (Foobar) applicationContext.getBean("Foobar1"); //$NON-NLS-1$
  }

 /**
   * @return session scoped bean
   */
  private Foobar getFoobar2() {
    return (Foobar) applicationContext.getBean("Foobar2"); //$NON-NLS-1$
  }

 /**
   * @return singleton bean
   */
  private Foobar getFoobar3() {
    return (Foobar) applicationContext.getBean("Foobar3"); //$NON-NLS-1$
  }
}

The magic happend in the loadApplicationContext.

Try it 🙂