I have webapp which provides web service. I want to perform JUnit tests with SoapUI to check if this service is working properly.
But to test web service application has to be deployed to my Tomcat 7 server.
I have no idea how to configure maven to build war, then deploy it to tomcat (ideally: to run separate tomcat instance for this) and then to run JUnit tests.
I will appreciate any help.
I am using maven 2.2.1
Best Answer
There are a number of schools of thought as to how to handle this type of integration test with Maven.
I should point out that when you are deploying an application to an application server, you are not in the realm of unit testing any more. Because the entire application is being deployed within a container, you are testing the integration of those two components.
Now there is nothing wrong with using JUnit for running integration tests (though there are some limitations that you may hit, for example unit tests should not care about the sequencing of individual tests - assuming you are writing them correctly - so JUnit enforces this by not guaranteeing any sequence of execution... prior to Java 1.7 the execution order was accidentally implied by the order of test methods within a class, but it was not part of the JUnit contract... Some people switch to other testing frameworks for their integration tests, e.g. TestNG, if they find the unit test focus of JUnit is getting in the way of their test development)
The key point to keep in mind is that the Maven lifecycle uses the
test
phase for the execution of unit tests.When it comes to integration tests there are two (and a half) schools of thought as to the right way to handle the tests with Maven.
School 1 - Failsafe and
integration-test/verify
This school of thought uses the phases after
package
to start up a container, run the integration tests, tear down the container, and finally check the test results and fail the build in the event of test failures.NEVER EVER RUN
mvn integration-test
as that will not tear down the container correctly, any time you think you want to typemvn integration-test
you actually want to typemvn verify
(oh look, it's shorter and easier to type also... bonus)So with this you do the following:
pre-integration-test
phase withfork
=true
integration-test
phasepost-integration-test
phaseverify
phase.For extra brownie points you would use build-helper-maven-plugin:reserve-network-port bound to the
validate
phase to ensure that the test server is started on an unused network port and then either use resource filtering against the test resources to pass the port through to the tests or use a system property passed through systemPropertyVariables to make the port number available to the tests.Advantages
run-its
) if the tests are too slow to run every build.Disadvantages
IT
and while Maven knows to run tests starting/ending inTest
with Surefire and run tests starting/ending inIT
with Failsafe, your IDE probably doesn't. Additionally, your IDE is not going to start the container for you, so you have to do a lot of work by hand to actually run the tests manually.Debugging the tests potentially requires attaching two debuggers, e.g. one to debug the application running in container and the other to debug the test cases.
Couples your tests to the Maven build process.
School 2 - Separate module
This school of thought moves the integration tests into a separate module that depends on the
war
module and copies thewar
into the test resources using, e.g.dependency:copy-dependencies
bound to thegenerate-test-resources
phase coupled with a Tomcat7 dependency to test against.The test cases themselves start up the Tomcat7 container using embedded mode
Advantages
Disadvantages
war
artifact is only rebuilt if you go past thepackage
phase, consequently, you need to run at leastmvn clean package
periodically to refresh the code under test when using the IDE.war
module, so you can end up releasing a brokenwar
artifact and then have the reactor build fail for the integration test module. Some people counteract this issue by having the integration test module withinsrc/it
and using Maven Invoker Plugin to run the tests... though that provides a poorer IDE integration, so I do not recommend that line.School 2.5 - Failsafe with the test cases starting their own Tomcat7 server
This is a kind of hybrid of the two approaches.
You use Failsafe to execute the tests, but the tests themselves are responsible for starting and stopping the Tomcat7 container that you want to test in.
Advantages
Disadvantages
I hope the above helps you understand the options you have. There may be other tweaks but in general the above are considered the best practice(s) for integration testing with Maven at present.