Integration Test Data Set Up in Spring Boot

Question

Here is my test class

    @SpringBootTest
    @ActiveProfiles("test")
    public MyTest {

       ...

       @Before
       public void init() {
          System.out.println(":::: --- start init() ---");
          ...
        }
       ...
    }

Strange enough, the init() won't run for some reason. If I change the @Before to @BeforeAll and the method to static, the init() will run. A problem is that those data set up code doesn't run inside a static method and I can't change all of them to run inside a static block. For now, I have the following code in each test method to overcome the issue

    if(list.size() == 0)
       init();

I am wondering why the @Before won't run. Any advice?

Answer 1

In JUnit 5, @BeforeEach and @BeforeAll annotations are the equivalents for @Before and @BeforeClass in JUnit 4.

@Before is a JUnit 4 annotation, while @BeforeAll is a JUnit 5 annotation. You can also see this from the imports org.junit.Before and org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeAll.

Also, the code marked @BeforeEach is executed before each test, while @BeforeAll runs once before the entire test fixture.

To be able to run @BeforeAll on a non-static method you can change the lifecycle of the the test instance with:

@TestInstance(TestInstance.Lifecycle.PER_CLASS)

You have to be careful though, since the test class instance is now only created once, and not once per test method. If your test methods rely on state stored in instance variables, you may now need to manually reset the state in @BeforeEach or @AfterEach lifecycle methods.