Introduction

CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection) is a powerful Java EE technology that provides a standard way to manage contextual object instances and implement dependency injection. Arquillian is a testing framework that simplifies the task of integration testing of Java EE applications.

In this blog post, we will explore how to test CDI beans with Arquillian. We will see how to set up the testing environment, how to deploy CDI beans, and how to perform assertions on the CDI bean instances.

Setting up the testing environment

To get started, we need to include the necessary dependencies for Arquillian and CDI in our Maven or Gradle project. Here is an example of the relevant dependencies in a Maven project:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.arquillian.junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>arquillian-junit-container</artifactId>
    <version>${arquillian.version}</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.arquillian.container</groupId>
    <artifactId>arquillian-weld-ee-embedded-1.1</artifactId>
    <version>${arquillian.version}</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Replace ${arquillian.version} with the desired Arquillian version.

Deploying CDI beans

Now that our testing environment is set up, we can start deploying our CDI beans for testing. In Arquillian, we can use the @Deployment annotation to specify the beans that we want to deploy. Here’s an example:

@RunWith(Arquillian.class)
public class CDITest {

    @Deployment
    public static JavaArchive createDeployment() {
        return ShrinkWrap.create(JavaArchive.class)
                .addClasses(MyBean.class)
                .addAsManifestResource(EmptyAsset.INSTANCE, "beans.xml");
    }

    @Inject
    private MyBean myBean;
    
    // Tests go here
}

In the example above, we have a CDI bean called MyBean which we want to test. We include it in the deployment using the addClasses method. We also include a beans.xml file, which is required for CDI bean discovery.

Performing assertions

Now that our CDI bean is deployed, we can perform assertions on it to verify its behavior. Arquillian allows us to write tests just like typical JUnit tests. We can use assertions from any testing framework (e.g., JUnit, TestNG) to verify the results.

@Test
public void testMyBean() {
    assertNotNull(myBean);
    assertEquals("Hello, Arquillian!", myBean.sayHello());
}

In the example above, we are asserting that the injected myBean instance is not null and that the result of calling its sayHello method matches our expectations.

Conclusion

Testing CDI beans with Arquillian is a powerful approach to ensure the correctness of your application’s CDI components. In this blog post, we saw how to set up the testing environment, deploy CDI beans, and perform assertions on the bean instances.

By combining the capabilities of CDI and Arquillian, you can write comprehensive and reliable tests for your CDI-powered Java EE applications.

#CDI #Arquillian