Assert an object is a specific type

Is it possible in JUnit to assert an object is an instance of a class? For various reasons I have an object in my test that I want to check the type of. Is it a type of Object1 or a type of Object2?

Currently I have:

assertTrue(myObject instanceof Object1);
assertTrue(myObject instanceof Object2);

This works but I was wondering if there is a more expressive way of doing this.

For example something like:

assertObjectIsClass(myObject, Object1);

I could do this:

assertEquals(myObject.class, Object1.getClass());

Is there a specific assert method that allows me to test a type of an object in a more elegant, fluid manner?

Solution 1:

You can use the assertThat method and the Matchers that comes with JUnit.

Take a look at this link that describes a little bit about the JUnit Matchers.

Example:

public class BaseClass {
}

public class SubClass extends BaseClass {
}

Test:

import org.junit.Test;

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.instanceOf;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;

/**
 * @author maba, 2012-09-13
 */
public class InstanceOfTest {

    @Test
    public void testInstanceOf() {
        SubClass subClass = new SubClass();
        assertThat(subClass, instanceOf(BaseClass.class));
    }
}

Solution 2:

Since assertThat which was the old answer is now deprecated, I am posting the correct solution:

assertTrue(objectUnderTest instanceof TargetObject);

Solution 3:

Solution for JUnit 5

The documentation says:

However, JUnit Jupiter’s org.junit.jupiter.Assertions class does not provide an assertThat() method like the one found in JUnit 4’s org.junit.Assert class which accepts a Hamcrest Matcher. Instead, developers are encouraged to use the built-in support for matchers provided by third-party assertion libraries.

Example for Hamcrest:

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.instanceOf;
import static org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

class HamcrestAssertionDemo {

    @Test
    void assertWithHamcrestMatcher() {
        SubClass subClass = new SubClass();
        assertThat(subClass, instanceOf(BaseClass.class));
    }

}

Example for AssertJ:

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

class AssertJDemo {

    @Test
    void assertWithAssertJ() {
        SubClass subClass = new SubClass();
        assertThat(subClass).isInstanceOf(BaseClass.class);
    }

}

Note that this assumes you want to test behaviors similar to instanceof (which accepts subclasses). If you want exact equal type, I don’t see a better way than asserting the two class to be equal like you mentioned in the question.

Solution 4:

Solution for JUnit 5 for Kotlin!