Spring Boot Starter Test

Spring Boot Starter Test

Spring Boot Starter Test is used for testing Spring Boot applications with libraries including JUnit Jupiter, Hamcrest, and Mockito. It is the primary dependency for the test. 

For testing, we need to add the spring-boot-starter-test dependency into the pom.xml file. 

When we create a spring boot application the spring-boot-starter-test is by default added into pom.xml.

<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

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Note: If the test dependency is added manually, it should be added to the bottom of the dependencies tag in the pom.xml.

You can see the above code in the following picture:

We can notice in the above dependency that it includes the scope of test <scope>test</scope>. It means when the application is bundled and packaged for deployment, any dependency that is declared with the test scopes is ignored. The test scope dependencies are only available when running in the development mode.

Whenever we create a spring boot application, the spring-boot-starter-test is by default added into the pom.xml and ApplicationTests.java file under the folder src/test/java.

You can see that the src/test/java folder contains ApplicationTests.java (CodingNinjasApplicationTests.java here)  in the following picture:

To run a test on your application, open the ApplicationTest.java file inside the src/test/java folder and run it as Junit Test. Like below.

After running the test file as Junit Test, we get the following output:

It shows that the particular unit has no error (Errors: 0), and the application runs successfully without any interruption or failure traces(Failure: 0).

FAQs

1. What is the spring boot starter test?
   Spring Boot Starter Test is used for testing Spring Boot applications with libraries including JUnit Jupiter, Hamcrest, and Mockito. It is the primary dependency for the test.
    
2. Do we need to add the spring-boot-starter-test dependency into the pom.xml file manually?
   No, the spring-boot-starter-test dependency is by default present in the pom.xml of our application.
    
3. Does the spring-boot-starter-test dependency is required in production?
   The unit testing is only to check if each unit of our application is working properly or not. The spring-boot-starter-test dependency is not required during the deployment stage. That’s why they are declared with the test scopes. The test scope dependencies are only available when running in the development mode and excluded during the production stage.

Key Takeaways

In this blog, we have learned about the spring boot starter test, how to run a unit test in a spring boot application.

Happy Learning!!