Testing Request- and Session-scoped Beans
Spring has supported Request- and session-scoped beans since the early years, and you can test your request-scoped and session-scoped beans by following these steps:
-
Ensure that a
WebApplicationContext
is loaded for your test by annotating your test class with@WebAppConfiguration
. -
Inject the mock request or session into your test instance and prepare your test fixture as appropriate.
-
Invoke your web component that you retrieved from the configured
WebApplicationContext
(with dependency injection). -
Perform assertions against the mocks.
The next code snippet shows the XML configuration for a login use case. Note that the
userService
bean has a dependency on a request-scoped loginAction
bean. Also, the
LoginAction
is instantiated by using SpEL expressions that
retrieve the username and password from the current HTTP request. In our test, we want to
configure these request parameters through the mock managed by the TestContext framework.
The following listing shows the configuration for this use case:
<beans>
<bean id="userService" class="com.example.SimpleUserService"
c:loginAction-ref="loginAction"/>
<bean id="loginAction" class="com.example.LoginAction"
c:username="#{request.getParameter('user')}"
c:password="#{request.getParameter('pswd')}"
scope="request">
<aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>
</beans>
In RequestScopedBeanTests
, we inject both the UserService
(that is, the subject under
test) and the MockHttpServletRequest
into our test instance. Within our
requestScope()
test method, we set up our test fixture by setting request parameters in
the provided MockHttpServletRequest
. When the loginUser()
method is invoked on our
userService
, we are assured that the user service has access to the request-scoped
loginAction
for the current MockHttpServletRequest
(that is, the one in which we just
set parameters). We can then perform assertions against the results based on the known
inputs for the username and password. The following listing shows how to do so:
-
Request-scoped bean test
-
Kotlin
@SpringJUnitWebConfig
class RequestScopedBeanTests {
@Autowired UserService userService;
@Autowired MockHttpServletRequest request;
@Test
void requestScope() {
request.setParameter("user", "enigma");
request.setParameter("pswd", "$pr!ng");
LoginResults results = userService.loginUser();
// assert results
}
}
@SpringJUnitWebConfig
class RequestScopedBeanTests {
@Autowired lateinit var userService: UserService
@Autowired lateinit var request: MockHttpServletRequest
@Test
fun requestScope() {
request.setParameter("user", "enigma")
request.setParameter("pswd", "\$pr!ng")
val results = userService.loginUser()
// assert results
}
}
The following code snippet is similar to the one we saw earlier for a request-scoped
bean. However, this time, the userService
bean has a dependency on a session-scoped
userPreferences
bean. Note that the UserPreferences
bean is instantiated by using a
SpEL expression that retrieves the theme from the current HTTP session. In our test, we
need to configure a theme in the mock session managed by the TestContext framework. The
following example shows how to do so:
<beans>
<bean id="userService" class="com.example.SimpleUserService"
c:userPreferences-ref="userPreferences" />
<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.example.UserPreferences"
c:theme="#{session.getAttribute('theme')}"
scope="session">
<aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>
</beans>
In SessionScopedBeanTests
, we inject the UserService
and the MockHttpSession
into
our test instance. Within our sessionScope()
test method, we set up our test fixture by
setting the expected theme
attribute in the provided MockHttpSession
. When the
processUserPreferences()
method is invoked on our userService
, we are assured that
the user service has access to the session-scoped userPreferences
for the current
MockHttpSession
, and we can perform assertions against the results based on the
configured theme. The following example shows how to do so:
-
Session-scoped bean test
-
Kotlin
@SpringJUnitWebConfig
class SessionScopedBeanTests {
@Autowired UserService userService;
@Autowired MockHttpSession session;
@Test
void sessionScope() throws Exception {
session.setAttribute("theme", "blue");
Results results = userService.processUserPreferences();
// assert results
}
}
@SpringJUnitWebConfig
class SessionScopedBeanTests {
@Autowired lateinit var userService: UserService
@Autowired lateinit var session: MockHttpSession
@Test
fun sessionScope() {
session.setAttribute("theme", "blue")
val results = userService.processUserPreferences()
// assert results
}
}