Question

I have came across many resources which talk about using/not using multiple assertions during unit testing. But while writing UI level automation integration tests I end up in doing many assertion in one test, which does not seem very bad idea to me, especially when I use soft assertions which fail only during tear down and reporting all assertion failures in a test method, instead of limiting it to one report per test.

One such scenarios is filling a form having 10 fields (text box, drop down etc). Coming back to the form and verifying all entered values are available. What I don’t like with my tests is, it is filled with many assertions. I want to assert all of these values but yet want my tests to look clean and not like –

 public void testMethod() {
  // Some operation here
  softAssert("verification failed for field 1, expected value:" +value, isValuePresent(value));
  softAssert("verification failed for field 2, expected value:" +value, isValuePresent(value));
  softAssert("verification failed for field 3, expected value:" +value, isValuePresent(value));
  // Some more assertions here
}

I could extract these assertions to a different method but then I feel that assertions should be kept in test methods. to make it clear what is being tested in a test method.

Is just a trivial wishy washy feeling I have and such design of tests is justified? Or
I could make design enhancements in my test methods.

Answer 1

you can do what I’d call “assertion by example” which is simply an assertion at the form level. It would look something like this:

public void testMethod() {
  Form expected = new Form()
                    .field1('value1')
                    .field2('value2')
                    .field3('value3')
                    .field4('value4')

  Form result = someFormOperation();

  softAssert(expected, result);

}