Unit Test with Spring JPA - @Autowired is not working

Question

I have a unit test and a helper class. Unfortunely the Helper class' autowire does not work. It works fine in MyTest class.

    @RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
    @ContextConfiguration(locations={"classpath*:context.xml"})
    @Component
    public class MyTest {

        @Autowired
        private Something something1;

        @Autowired
        private Something something2;
        ..

        @Test
        public void test1()
        {
            // something1 and something2 are fine
            new Helper().initDB();
            ..
        }
   }

// Same package
public class Helper {
   @Autowired
   private Something something1;

   @Autowired
   private Something something2;
   ..

   public void initDB()
    {
        // something1 and something2 are null. I have tried various annotations.
    }
}

I'd like to avoid using setters because I have like 10 of those objects and different tests have different ones. So what is required to get @Autowired working in Helper class? Thx!

Answer 1

You must not create the Helper class by a new statement, but you have to let spring create it to become a spring been and therefore its @Autowired fields get injected.

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations={"classpath*:context.xml"})
@Component
public class MyTest {

    @Autowired
    private Something something1;

    @Autowired
    private Something something2;
    ..

    @Autowired
    private Helper helper

    @Test
    public void test1() {
        helper.initDB();
    }
}


//this class must been found by springs component scann
@Service
public class Helper {
   @Autowired
   private Something something1;

   @Autowired
   private Something something2;

   public void initDB(){...}
}