Every time I was trying to test an object's properties I was neither satisfied writing very verbose tests nor in using some of the out of the box hamcrest matchers. Although using the matchers was a big help, I never managed to make them read the way I wanted.
Another thing that was very important to me, I wanted to have a single assertion per method and a very descriptive description if the test did not pass.
I've decided to write my own matcher and hopefully it will be useful to other people. So, that's what I've done:
Hamcrest matcher to match multiple attributes of an object within a single assertion.
// Static imports
import static org.craftedsw.beanpropertymatcher.matcher.BeanMatcher.has;
import static org.craftedsw.beanpropertymatcher.matcher.BeanPropertyMatcher.property;
import static org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.equalTo;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.greaterThan;
// Imagine that you have a method that returns an object Person
Person person = new Person();
person.setFirstName("Sandro");
person.setAge(25);
person.setLastName("Mancuso");
// Then you can test it like that
assertThat(person, has(
property("firstName", equalTo("Another dude")), // Mistmatch
property("age", greaterThan(18)), // Use any matcher
property("lastName", equalTo("Mancuso"))));
Hamcrest matcher to match multiple attributes of an object within a single assertion.
NOTE: Make sure you are using org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat instead of the JUnit one.
If you run this test, you will get a message like
java.lang.AssertionError:
Expected: property "firstName" = "Another dude"
but: property "firstName" was "Sandro"
Now, change the age check to
property("age", greaterThan(60))
And you should get:
Testing object graphs
You can also do this
Person person = new Person();
person.setFirstName("Sandro");
person.setAge(35);
Country uk = new Country();
uk.setName("United Kingdom");
Address address = new Address();
address.setPostcode("1234556");
address.setCity("London");
address.setCountry(uk);
person.setAddress(address);
assertThat(person, has(
property("firstName", equalTo("Sandro")),
property("age", greaterThan(18)),
property("address.city", equalTo("London")),
property("address.postcode", equalTo("1234556")),
property("address.country.name", equalTo("United Kingdom"))));
I use a combination of two matchers to do that:
BeanMatcher: Provides the "has" method responsible to group all the property matchers.
BeanPropertyMatcher: Provides the "property" method.
I expect to make more changes to them, so for the most up-to-date version, please check BeanMatcher on my github account.
Enjoy!!!
Software craftsman, author, and founder of the London Software Craftsmanship Community (LSCC). Sandro has been coding since a very young age but only started his professional career in 1996. He has worked for startups, software houses, product companies, international consultancy companies, and investment banks.
During his career Sandro had the opportunity to work in a good variety of projects, with different languages, technologies, and across many different industries. Sandro has a lot of experience in bringing the Software Craftsmanship ideology and Extreme Programming practices to organisations of all sizes. Sandro is internationally renowned by his work on evolving and spreading Software Craftsmanship and is frequently invited to speak in many conferences around the world. His professional aspiration is to raise the bar of the software industry by helping developers become better at and care more about their craft.
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