Question

I am trying ot write an integration test for one of my controller classes which have an injected dependency in it. I try to test the part of my controller where it’s calling a method through the injected object, but when i run my test its failing due to a null pointer exception. At the test i used @ContexConfiguration and @RunsWith annotations, but it didin’t helped.
Some code might help 🙂

AuthenticationController:

@Controller
public class AuthenticationController {

    @Resource(name = "userManagement")
    private UserManagement um;


    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public String onSubmit(@ModelAttribute("user") UserForm user,
            BindingResult result, Model model, HttpSession session) {

        LoginFormValidator validator = new LoginFormValidator();
        validator.validate(user, result);
        if (result.hasErrors()) {
            return "login";
        } else {
            User u = um.login(user.getEmail(), user.getPwd());
            if (u != null) {
                session.setAttribute("user", u);
                LOGGER.info("succesful login with email: " + u.getEmail());
                model.addAttribute("result", "succesful login");
            } else {
                model.addAttribute("result", "login failed");
            }
            return "result";
        }
    }

in test-context.xml:
beans:bean id="userManagement" class="my.packages.UserManagement"

AuthenticationControllerTest:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {"test-context.xml" })
public class AuthenticationControllerTest {

    private MockHttpServletRequest request;
    private MockHttpServletResponse response;
    private AuthenticationController controller;

    @Before
    public void setUp() {
       request = new MockHttpServletRequest();
       response = new MockHttpServletResponse();
       controller = new AuthenticationController();
    }

    @Test
    public void testLoginPost() throws Exception {
        request.setMethod("POST");
        request.setRequestURI("/login");
        request.setParameter("email", "[e-mail]");
        request.setParameter("pwd", "test");
        final ModelAndView mav = new AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter()
                .handle(request, response, controller);
        final UserForm u =
               assertAndReturnModelAttributeOfType(mav, "user", UserForm.class);
        assertEquals("[e-mail]", u.getEmail());
        assertEquals("test", u.getPwd());
        assertViewName(mav, "result");

       /* if UserForm is not valid */
        final BindingResult errors = assertAndReturnModelAttributeOfType(mav,
                "org.springframework.validation.BindingResult.user",
                BindingResult.class);
        assertTrue(errors.hasErrors());
        assertViewName(mav, "login");
    }

The stacktrace tells me that the error happens where the test calls the login method of the injected userMangaement object. um = null so the injection is not working with the test.
The controller works fine in useage.

Any comment would help a lot!

Thanks in advance,

Sorex

Answer 1

If you want autowire dependencies you can’t create your controller like this:

controller = new AuthenticationController();

You can autowire you dependency into your test

@Autowired
private UserManagement um;

and create constructor in your controller to be able to do this:

@Before
public void setUp() {
   controller = new AuthenticationController(um);
}

But I would recommend to use MockServletContext.

MockServletContext mockServletContext = new MockServletContext();
mockServletContext.addInitParameter("contextConfigLocation", "path to your xml config"));
ContextLoaderListener listener = new ContextLoaderListener();
listener.initWebApplicationContext(mockServletContext);

There should be also reference to DispatcherServlet somewhere. I have never done this in servlet environmentm, only in spring portlet mvc, but it shoul be similar. The idea is to create fake web application context and call dispacher servlet to have full integration test between your controllers an spring configuration.