How to do unit tests for processing time timers?

Question

I'm writing unit tests for a CoProcessFunction. Is there a way to drive processing time forward manually in tests to trigger onTimer calls?

Answer 1

Flink provides test harnesses to test functions with timers and state. The allow you to "control" the time and also validate properties of the state.

The following code block is copied from the official documentation to give you an idea how the harnesses are used.

public class StatefulFlatMapTest {
    private OneInputStreamOperatorTestHarness<Long, Long> testHarness;
    private StatefulFlatMap statefulFlatMapFunction;

    @Before
    public void setupTestHarness() throws Exception {

        //instantiate user-defined function
        statefulFlatMapFunction = new StatefulFlatMapFunction();

        // wrap user defined function into a the corresponding operator
        testHarness = new OneInputStreamOperatorTestHarness<>(new StreamFlatMap<>(statefulFlatMapFunction));

        // optionally configured the execution environment
        testHarness.getExecutionConfig().setAutoWatermarkInterval(50);

        // open the test harness (will also call open() on RichFunctions)
        testHarness.open();
    }

    @Test
    public void testingStatefulFlatMapFunction() throws Exception {

        //push (timestamped) elements into the operator (and hence user defined function)
        testHarness.processElement(2L, 100L);

        //trigger event time timers by advancing the event time of the operator with a watermark
        testHarness.processWatermark(100L);

        //trigger processing time timers by advancing the processing time of the operator directly
        testHarness.setProcessingTime(100L);

        //retrieve list of emitted records for assertions
        assertThat(testHarness.getOutput(), containsInExactlyThisOrder(3L));

        //retrieve list of records emitted to a specific side output for assertions (ProcessFunction only)
        //assertThat(testHarness.getSideOutput(new OutputTag<>("invalidRecords")), hasSize(0))
    }
}

Please check the docs for details about which dependencies to include, which harnesses exist, and how to use them.