Spring DBUnit provides integration between the Spring testing framework and the popular DBUnit project. It allows you to setup and teardown database tables using simple annotations as well as checking expected table contents once a test completes.
The project can be configured to run DBUnit tests using a Spring TestExecutionListener.
To have Spring process DBUnit annotations you must first configure your tests to use the DbUnitTestExecutionListener
class. To do this you need to use the Spring @TestExecutionListeners annotation. Generally, as well as
DbUnitTestExecutionListener, you will also want to include the standard Spring listeners as well. Here are the
annotations for a typical JUnit 4 test:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@TestExecutionListeners({ DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.class,
DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener.class,
TransactionalTestExecutionListener.class,
DbUnitTestExecutionListener.class })
See the Spring JavaDocs for details of the standard listeners.
In order to access the database, Spring DBUnit requires a bean to be registered in your test context. By default a bean
named dbUnitDatabaseConnection or dataSource can be used (see the Advanced Configuration section below if you need
to use another name). The bean can reference either a IDatabaseConnection or more typically a standard Java
DataSource. Here is a typical XML configuration for accessing an in-memory hypersonic database:
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver" />
<property name="url" value="jdbc:hsqldb:mem:paging" />
<property name="username" value="sa" />
<property name="password" value="" />
</bean>
Once you have configured the DbUnitTestExecutionListener and provided the bean to access you database you can use the
DBUnit annotations.
Note: You need to complete the steps from the configuration section above before any annotations can be used. Without appropriate configuration DBUnit annotations will be silently ignored.
The @DatabaseSetup and @DatabaseTearDown annotations can be used to configure database table before tests execute
and reset them once tests have completed.
The @DatabaseSetup annotation indicates how database tables should be setup before test methods are run. The
annotation can be applied to individual test methods or to a whole class. When applied at the class level the setup
occurs before each method in the test. The annotation value references a file that contains the table DataSet used
when resetting the database. Typically this is a standard DBUnit XML file, although it is possible to load custom
formats (see below).
Here is a typical setup annotation. In this case a file named sampleData.xml is contained in the same package as the
test class.
@DatabaseSetup("sampleData.xml")
It is also possible to reference specific resource locations, for example:
@DatabaseSetup("/META-INF/dbtest/sampleData.xml")
By default setup will perform a CLEAN_INSERT operation, this means that all data from tables referenced in the
DataSet XML will be removed before inserting new rows. The standard DBUnit operations are supported using type
attribute. See the JavaDocs for full details.
The @DatabaseTearDown annotation can be used to reset database tables once a test has completed. As with
@DatabaseSetup the annotation can be applied at the method or class level. When using @DatabaseTearDown use the
value and type attributes in the same way as @DatabaseSetup.
Note: If you are running a teardown in conjunction with a @Transactional test you may need to use an alternative
configuration. See the section on below.
The @ExpectedDatabase annotation can be used to verify the contents of database once a test has completed. You would
typically use this annotation when a test performs an insert, update or delete. You can apply the annotation on a
single test method or a class. When applied at the class level verification occurs after each test method.
The @ExpectedDatabase annotation takes a value attribute that references the DataSet file used to verify results.
Here is a typical example:
@ExpectedDatabase("expectedData.xml")
The @ExpectedDatabase annotation supports two different modes. DatabaseAssertionMode.DEFAULT operates as any
standard DbUnit test, performing a complete compare of the expected and actual datasets.
DatabaseAssertionMode.NON_STRICT will ignore tables and column names which are not specified in the expected dataset
but exist in the actual datasets. This can be useful during integration tests performed on live databases containing
multiple tables that have many columns, so one must not specify all of them, but only the 'interesting' ones.
Note: If you are using this annotation in conjunction with a @Transactional test you may need to use an alternative
configuration. See the section on below.
If you have configured DBUnit tests to run using the are DbUnitTestExecutionListener and are also using the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener you may experience problems with transactions not being started before your data
is setup, or being rolled back before expected results can be verified. In order to support @Transactional tests with
DBUnit you should use the TransactionDbUnitTestExecutionListener class.
Here are the annotations for a typical JUnit 4 test:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@Transactional
@TestExecutionListeners({ DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.class,
DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener.class,
TransactionDbUnitTestExecutionListener.class })
Transactions start before @DatabaseSetup and end after @DatabaseTearDown and @ExpectedDatabase.
The @DbUnitConfiguration annotation can be used if you need to configure advanced options for DBUnit.
The databaseConnection attribute allows you to specify a specific bean name from the Spring Context that contains the
database connection. When not specified the names or can be used. The bean must be either an IDatabaseConnection
or a DataSource.
The dataSetLoader or dataSetLoaderBean attribute allows you to specify a custom loader that will be used when
reading datasets (see below). If no specific loader is specified a dbUnitDataSetLoader bean will be used from the
ApplicationContext (or if no such bean exists, the FlatXmlDataSetLoader will be used).
The databaseOperationLookup attribute allows you to specify a custom lookup strategy for DBUnit database operations
(see below).
It is possible to configure Spring Test DBUnit to work with multiple connections within the same test. First declare
multiple DataSource or IDatabaseConnection beans in your application context. For example, here is XML configuration
for two in-memory databases:
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver" />
<property name="url" value="jdbc:hsqldb:mem:paging" />
<property name="username" value="sa" />
<property name="password" value="" />
</bean>
<bean id="customerDataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver" />
<property name="url" value="jdbc:hsqldb:mem:customers" />
<property name="username" value="sa" />
<property name="password" value="" />
</bean>
You then need to use the @DbUnitConfiguration on your test to link to the connections:
@DbUnitConfiguration(databaseConnection={"dataSource", "customerDataSource"})
The @DatabaseSetup, @DatabaseTearDown and @ExpectedDatabase annotations all have a connection attribute which
can be used if you need to target a specific connection. If you don't specify a connection the first
databaseConnection from @DbUnitConfiguration will be used ("dataSource" in the example above).
Spring Test DBUnit Annotations are repeatable so if you are using Java 8+ you can use several with the same test. For example:
@Test
@DatabaseSetup(value = "insert.xml")
@DatabaseSetup(connection="customerDataSource", value="insert-custs.xml")
public void testInsert() throws Exception {
// Inserts "insert.xml" into dataSource and "insert-custs.xml" into customerDataSource
// ...
}
If you are using an earlier version of Java you will need to use one of the wrapper annotations:
@Test
@DatabaseSetups({
@DatabaseSetup(value = "insert.xml")
@DatabaseSetup(connection="customerDataSource", value="insert-custs.xml")
})
public void testInsert() throws Exception {
// Inserts "insert.xml" into dataSource and "insert-custs.xml" into customerDataSource
// ...
}
In some situations you may need to create an IDatabaseConnection with a specific DBUnit configuration. Unfortunately,
the standard DBUnit DatabaseConfig class cannot be easily using with Spring. In order to overcome this limitation,
the DatabaseConfigBean provides an alternative method to configure a connection; with standard getter/setter access
provided for all configuration options. The DatabaseDataSourceConnectionFactoryBean accepts a configuration property
and should be used to construct the final connection. Here is a typical example:
<bean id="dbUnitDatabaseConfig" class="com.github.springtestdbunit.bean.DatabaseConfigBean">
<property name="skipOracleRecyclebinTables" value="true"/>
</bean>
<bean id="dbUnitDatabaseConnection" class="com.github.springtestdbunit.bean.DatabaseDataSourceConnectionFactoryBean">
<property name="databaseConfig" ref="dbUnitDatabaseConfig"/>
</bean>
NOTE: In most circumstances the username and password properties should not be set on the
DatabaseDataSourceConnectionFactoryBean. These properties will cause DBUnit to start a new transaction and may cause
unexpected behavior.
By default DBUnit datasets are loaded from flat XML files. If you need to load data from another source you will need
to write your own DataSet loader and configure your tests to use it. Custom loaders must implement the DataSetLoader
interface and provide an implementation of the loadDataSet method. The AbstractDataSetLoader is also available and
provides a convenient base class for most loaders.
Here is an example loader that reads data from a CSV formatted file.
public class CsvDataSetLoader extends AbstractDataSetLoader {
protected IDataSet createDataSet(Resource resource) throws Exception {
return new CsvURLDataSet(resource.getURL());
}
}
See above for details of how to configure a test class to use the loader.
In some situations you may need to use custom DBUnit DatabaseOperation classes. For example, DBUnit includes
org.dbunit.ext.mssql.InsertIdentityOperation for use with Microsoft SQL Server. The DatabaseOperationLookup
interface can be used to create your own lookup strategy if you need support custom operations. A
MicrosoftSqlDatabaseOperationLookup class is provided to support the aforementioned MSSQL operations.
See above for details of how to configure a test class to use the custom lookup.