Custom JUnit4 Test Runners

Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, you can get started over on the documentation page.

And, you can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

End-to-end testing is a very useful method to make sure that your application works as intended. This highlights issues in the overall functionality of the software, that the unit and integration test stages may miss.

Playwright is an easy-to-use, but powerful tool that automates end-to-end testing, and supports all modern browsers and platforms.

When coupled with LambdaTest (an AI-powered cloud-based test execution platform) it can be further scaled to run the Playwright scripts in parallel across 3000+ browser and device combinations:

>> Automated End-to-End Testing With Playwright

1. Overview

In this quick article, we’re going to focus on how to run JUnit tests using custom test runners.

Simply put, in order to specify the custom runner, we’ll need to use the @RunWith annotation.

2. Preparation

Let’s start by adding the standard JUnit dependency into our pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>junit</groupId>
  <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
  <version>4.12</version>  
</dependency>

3. Implementing a Custom Runner

In the following example, we’ll show how to write our own custom Runner – and run it using @RunWith.

A JUnit Runner is a class that extends JUnit’s abstract Runner class and it is responsible for running JUnit tests, typically using reflection.

Here, we’re implementing abstract methods of Runner class:

public class TestRunner extends Runner {

    private Class testClass;
    public TestRunner(Class testClass) {
        super();
        this.testClass = testClass;
    }

    @Override
    public Description getDescription() {
        return Description
          .createTestDescription(testClass, "My runner description");
    }

    @Override
    public void run(RunNotifier notifier) {
        System.out.println("running the tests from MyRunner: " + testClass);
        try {
            Object testObject = testClass.newInstance();
            for (Method method : testClass.getMethods()) {
                if (method.isAnnotationPresent(Test.class)) {
                    notifier.fireTestStarted(Description
                      .createTestDescription(testClass, method.getName()));
                    method.invoke(testObject);
                    notifier.fireTestFinished(Description
                      .createTestDescription(testClass, method.getName()));
                }
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }
}

The getDescription method is inherited from Describable and returns a Description that contains the information that is later being exported and may be used by various tools.

In the run implementation, we’re invoking the target test methods using reflection.

We’ve defined a constructor that takes a Class argument; this is a JUnit’s requirement. At runtime, JUnit will pass the target test class to this constructor.

RunNotifier is used for firing events that have information about the test progress.

Let’s use the runner in our test class:

public class Calculator {
    public int add(int a, int b) {
        return a + b;
    }
}

@RunWith(TestRunner.class)
public class CalculatorTest {
    Calculator calculator = new Calculator();

    @Test
    public void testAddition() {
        Syste.out.println("in testAddition");
        assertEquals("addition", 8, calculator.add(5, 3));
    }
}

The result we get:

-------------------------------------------------------
 T E S T S
-------------------------------------------------------
Running com.baeldung.junit.CalculatorTest
running the tests from MyRunner: class com.baeldung.junit.CalculatorTest
in testAddition
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.002 sec

Results :

Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0

4. Specialized Runners

Instead of extending the low-level Runner class, as we did in the last example, we can extend one of the specialized subclasses of Runner: ParentRunner or BlockJUnit4Runner.

The abstract ParentRunner class runs the tests in a hierarchical manner.

BlockJUnit4Runner is a concrete class and if we prefer to customize certain methods, we’ll probably be extending this class.

Let’s see that with an example:

public class BlockingTestRunner extends BlockJUnit4ClassRunner {
    public BlockingTestRunner(Class<?> klass) throws InitializationError {
        super(klass);
    }

    @Override
    protected Statement methodInvoker(FrameworkMethod method, Object test) {
        System.out.println("invoking: " + method.getName());
        return super.methodInvoker(method, test);
    }
}

Annotating a class with @RunWith(JUnit4.class) will always invoke the default JUnit 4 runner in the current version of JUnit; this class aliases the current default JUnit 4 class runner:

@RunWith(JUnit4.class)
public class CalculatorTest {
    Calculator calculator = new Calculator();

    @Test
    public void testAddition() {
        assertEquals("addition", 8, calculator.add(5, 3));
    }
}

5. Conclusion

JUnit Runners are highly adaptable and let the developer change the test execution procedure and the whole test process.

If we only want to make minor changes it is a good idea to have a look at the protected methods of BlockJUnit4Class runner.

Some popular third-party implementations of runners for use include SpringJUnit4ClassRunner, MockitoJUnitRunner, HierarchicalContextRunner, Cucumber Runner and much more.

The code backing this article is available on GitHub. Once you're logged in as a Baeldung Pro Member, start learning and coding on the project.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.