Unit Testing

Last modified: November 19, 2024

Introduction

Use the Unit Testing module to run Mendix and JUnit unit tests inside your app.

Dependencies

  • junit-4.13.1.jar
  • commons-io-2.11.0.jar
  • commons-lang3-3.12.0.jar
  • httpclient5-5.0.3.jar
  • httpcore5-5.0.3.jar
  • hamcrest-2.2.jar

Installation

  1. Import the Unit Testing module into your app.

    For more information, see How to Use Marketplace Content.

  2. Map the module role TestRunner to the applicable user roles in your app.

  3. Add the UnitTestOverview microflow to your navigation structure, or include the UnitTestOverview snippet on a custom page.

  4. The following steps are optional:

    • For including JUnit tests – set the UnitTesting.FindJUnitTests constant to true (take the app settings regarding cloud security into consideration)
    • For running remote unit tests via API:
      • Add the Startup flow to your app model’s startup sequence
      • Set the UnitTesting.RemoteApiEnabled constant to true and provide a password for UnitTesting.RemoteApiPassword
      • When hosting in a cloud node or on-premises, open a request handler on the unittests/ path

Usage

To run a unit test, first navigate to the test suite overview on the left side of the page. A test suite reflects all the unit tests that are available in a module of your app. When you select a test suite, all the unit tests inside the suite are displayed, including their last result, if applicable.

Click Run all module tests to run all the unit tests in all the suites or all the unit tests in the selected suite. When the unit tests are running, the progress will be tracked.

You can also run a test individually by clicking Run test. If a JUnit test class is selected, all the tests in the test class are run another time.

When a unit test has been run, additional details about the test result will appear (for example, success, failure, and exception stack traces).

Creating Unit Tests

Creating Microflow Unit Tests

To create a new microflow test in a module, just add a microflow with a name that starts with TEST_ or UT_ (case-insensitive). A test microflow should have no input arguments and either no result type, a Boolean result type, or a string result type. For string results, a non-empty string is interpreted as an error message. A microflow without a return type is considered to be successful as long as no exceptions are thrown.

In addition, it is possible to create a Setup and TearDown microflow per module. Those microflows are invoked once before and after each test run (regardless of whether the test run consists of one or multiple unit tests).

The Unit Testing module publishes a reportStep microflow that can be used inside your test microflow to track the progress inside a test. The last step successfully reached in a unit test is reported back in the test result. This makes it easier to inspect where things go wrong (although using the microflow/nanoflow debugger is usually more insightful).

Creating a Java Unit Tests (with JUNit)

The Java unit test runner is driven by JUnit and requires a general understanding of JUnit version 4. A JUnit test method is run if it exists somewhere in the module name space (that is, it is stored as a Java class that lives somewhere in the javasource/yourmodulename folder). A Java function is recognized as a test if it is public, non-static, parameter-less, and annotated with the org.junit.Test annotation. Multiple tests can exists in a single class, but JUnit does not guarantee the execution order of the tests.

For some example JUnit unit tests, see the src/javasource/unittesting/UnittestingUnitTest1.java and src/javasource/unittesting/UnittestingUnitTest2.java files.

You can base unit test classes on the AbstractUnitTest class. This class provides some time measurement functions (for example, to ignore setup and teardown in the time measure) and the reportStep function (which is otherwise accessible through TestManager.instance().reportStep).

Running Unit Tests Through the Remote API

A new test run through the remote JSON REST API can be started by using the endpoint unittests/start. Here is an example:

POST http://localhost:8080/unittests/start
{
	"password" : "1"
}

This request will be responded to with a 204 NO CONTENT response if the test run was started successfully. From that point on, you can pull for the status of the test run by invoking unittests/status. Here is an example:

POST http://localhost:8080/unittests/status
{
	"password" : "1"
}

This is an example response:

{
    "failures": 1,
    "tests": 10,
    "runtime": -1,
    "failed_tests": [{
        "error": "This exception is doopery nice",
        "name": "MyFirstModule.Test_ThisTestIsSupposedToFailToCheckExceptionRendering",
        "step": "Starting microflow test 'MyFirstModule.Test_ThisTestIsSupposedToFailToCheckExceptionRendering'"
    }],
    "completed": false
}

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