Question

I have written a few JUnit tests with @Test annotation. If my test method throws a checked exception and if I want to assert the message along with the exception, is there a way to do so with JUnit @Test annotation? AFAIK, JUnit 4.7 doesn’t provide this feature but does any future versions provide it? I know in .NET you can assert the message and the exception class. Looking for similar feature in the Java world.

This is what I want:

@Test (expected = RuntimeException.class, message = "Employee ID is null")
public void shouldThrowRuntimeExceptionWhenEmployeeIDisNull() {}

Answer 1

You could use the @Rule annotation with ExpectedException, like this:

@Rule
public ExpectedException expectedEx = ExpectedException.none();

@Test
public void shouldThrowRuntimeExceptionWhenEmployeeIDisNull() throws Exception {
    expectedEx.expect(RuntimeException.class);
    expectedEx.expectMessage("Employee ID is null");

    // do something that should throw the exception...
    System.out.println("=======Starting Exception process=======");
    throw new NullPointerException("Employee ID is null");
}

Note that the example in the ExpectedException docs is (currently) wrong – there’s no public constructor, so you have to use ExpectedException.none().