Spring-Boot Validating request body for several types

Question

I'm writing my spring-boot controller post request's unit tests. The post request accepts the body of type Message

class Message {
   String Type,
   String content
}

type can be any value from the MessageType

interface MessageType {
   String PLAIN = "PLAIN";
   String ACTION = "ACTION";
   String NOTIFICATION = "NOTIFICATION";
   .....
}

Since I want to confirm that controller accepts all supported message types I am writing the unit test for each type as shown below

    @Test
    void saveActivityTest_WhenTypeIsPlain() throws Exception {

        CimMessage cimMessage = new CimMessage();
        cimMessage.setType(MessageType.PLAIN);
        cimMessage.setContent("Dummy");
     
        mockMvc.perform(post("/activities").
                        contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON).
                        content(objectMapper.writeValueAsString(cimMessage)))
                .andExpect(status().isOk());
    }

As types might evolve over time and I would have to build a new unit test for every type, I was wondering if there was a general or effective way to unit test this.

I finally resort to writing a unit test for each type, which does not seem like an efficient method.

Answer 1

You can use "Parametrized Test"

@ParameterizedTest
@ValueSource(strings = {MessageType.PLAIN, MessageType.ACTION, MessageType.NOTIFICATION })
    void saveActivityTest_WhenTypeIsPlain(String messageType) throws Exception {

        CimMessage cimMessage = new CimMessage();
        cimMessage.setType(messageType);
        ... 
    }

You can input parameters as single values, in CSV format, or by using a method for more complex cases. See more in https://www.baeldung.com/parameterized-tests-junit-5