How to verify web responses when using Spring and test-mvc

Question

A question about how to use test-mvc for unit testing.

I have a simple controller:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {        
    private UserService business;
    @Autowired
    public UserController(UserService bus)
    {
        business = bus;
    }
    @RequestMapping(value="{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public @ResponseBody User getUserById(@PathVariable String id) throws ItemNotFoundException{

        return business.GetUserById(id);

    }

(( My idea is to keep the controllers so thin as possible.))

To test this controller I am trying to do something like this.

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = { "classpath:mvc-dispatcher-servlet.xml"})
public class UserControllerTest extends ControllerTestBase {

UserService mockedService;

@Before
public void Setup()
{

    MockitoAnnotations.initMocks( this );   
    mockedService = mock(UserService.class);

}

@Test
public void ReturnUserById() throws Exception{

    User user = new User();
    user.setName("Lasse");

    stub(mockedService.GetUserById("lasse")).toReturn(user);

    MockMvcBuilders.standaloneSetup(new UserController(mockedService)).build()
    .perform(get("/users/lasse"))
    .andExpect(status().isOk())
    .andExpect(?????????????????????????????);

}

My intention is to check that proper json code is returned,,,,,,

I am not a pro,,, so I have not found a way to replace ??????????????????????? with code to do verify the returned string but I am certain that there must be a elegant way to do this

Can anyone fill me in?

//lg

Answer 1

content().string(containsString("some part of the string"))

assuming that you have this import:

import static org.springframework.test.web.server.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.*;

Update: Adding jsonPath also based on your comments:

You can add a dependency to json-path, the 1.0.M1 seems to depend on an much older version of json-path though:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.jayway.jsonpath</groupId>
        <artifactId>json-path</artifactId>
        <version>0.5.5</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>   

With this your test can look like this:

.andExpect(jsonPath("$.persons[0].first").value("firstName"));