Integration Testing POSTing an entire object to Spring MVC controller

Solution 1:

I had the same question and it turned out the solution was fairly simple, by using JSON marshaller.
Having your controller just change the signature by changing @ModelAttribute("newObject") to @RequestBody. Like this:

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/somewhere/new")
public class SomewhereController {

    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public String post(@RequestBody NewObject newObject) {
        // ...
    }
}

Then in your tests you can simply say:

NewObject newObjectInstance = new NewObject();
// setting fields for the NewObject  

mockMvc.perform(MockMvcRequestBuilders.post(uri)
  .content(asJsonString(newObjectInstance))
  .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
  .accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON));

Where the asJsonString method is just:

public static String asJsonString(final Object obj) {
    try {
        final ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        final String jsonContent = mapper.writeValueAsString(obj);
        return jsonContent;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }
}  

Solution 2:

One of the main purposes of integration testing with MockMvc is to verify that model objects are correclty populated with form data.

In order to do it you have to pass form data as they're passed from actual form (using .param()). If you use some automatic conversion from NewObject to from data, your test won't cover particular class of possible problems (modifications of NewObject incompatible with actual form).

Solution 3:

I believe that I have the simplest answer yet using Spring Boot 1.4, included imports for the test class.:

public class SomeClass {  /// this goes in it's own file
//// fields go here
}

import org.junit.Before
import org.junit.Test
import org.junit.runner.RunWith
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.servlet.WebMvcTest
import org.springframework.http.MediaType
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringRunner
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.MockMvc

import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.request.MockMvcRequestBuilders.post
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.status

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebMvcTest(SomeController.class)
public class ControllerTest {

  @Autowired private MockMvc mvc;
  @Autowired private ObjectMapper mapper;

  private SomeClass someClass;  //this could be Autowired
                                //, initialized in the test method
                                //, or created in setup block
  @Before
  public void setup() {
    someClass = new SomeClass(); 
  }

  @Test
  public void postTest() {
    String json = mapper.writeValueAsString(someClass);
    mvc.perform(post("/someControllerUrl")
       .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
       .content(json)
       .accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))
       .andExpect(status().isOk());
  }

}

Solution 4:

I think most of these solutions are far too complicated. I assume that in your test controller you have this

 @Autowired
 private ObjectMapper objectMapper;

If its a rest service

@Test
public void test() throws Exception {
   mockMvc.perform(post("/person"))
          .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
          .content(objectMapper.writeValueAsString(new Person()))
          ...etc
}

For spring mvc using a posted form I came up with this solution. (Not really sure if its a good idea yet)

private MultiValueMap<String, String> toFormParams(Object o, Set<String> excludeFields) throws Exception {
    ObjectReader reader = objectMapper.readerFor(Map.class);
    Map<String, String> map = reader.readValue(objectMapper.writeValueAsString(o));

    MultiValueMap<String, String> multiValueMap = new LinkedMultiValueMap<>();
    map.entrySet().stream()
            .filter(e -> !excludeFields.contains(e.getKey()))
            .forEach(e -> multiValueMap.add(e.getKey(), (e.getValue() == null ? "" : e.getValue())));
    return multiValueMap;
}



@Test
public void test() throws Exception {
  MultiValueMap<String, String> formParams = toFormParams(new Phone(), 
  Set.of("id", "created"));

   mockMvc.perform(post("/person"))
          .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED)
          .params(formParams))
          ...etc
}

The basic idea is to - first convert object to json string to get all the field names easily - convert this json string into a map and dump it into a MultiValueMap that spring expects. Optionally filter out any fields you dont want to include (Or you could just annotate fields with @JsonIgnore to avoid this extra step)