5 min read

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Let’s start testing. Apache Camel comes with the Camel Test Kit: some classes leverage testing framework capabilities and extend with Camel specifics.

To test our application, let’s add this Camel Test Kit to our list of dependencies in the POM file, as shown in the following code:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
    <artifactId>camel-test</artifactId>
    <version>${camel-version}</version>
</dependency>

At the same time, if you have any JUnit dependency, the best solution would be to delete it for now so that Maven will resolve the dependency and we will get a JUnit version required by Camel.

Let’s rewrite our main program a little bit. Change the class App as shown in the following code:

public class App {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        Main m = new Main();
        m.addRouteBuilder( new AppRoute() );
        m.run();
    }
    static class AppRoute extends RouteBuilder {
        @Override
        public void configure() throws Exception {
            from("stream:in")
                    .to("file:test");
        }
    }
}

Instead of having an anonymous class extending RouteBuilder, we made it an inner class. That is, we are not going to test the main program. Instead, we are going to test if our routing works as expected, that is, messages from the system input are routed into the files in the test directory. At the beginning of the test, we will delete the test directory and our assertion will be that we have the directory test after we send the message and that it has exactly one file. To simplify the deleting of the directory test at the beginning of the unit test, we will use FileUtils.deleteDirectory from Apache Commons IO. Let’s add it to our list of dependencies:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
            <version>1.3.2</version>
        </dependency>

In our project layout, we have a file src/test/java/com/company/AppTest.java. This is a unit test that has been created from the Maven artifact that we used to create our application. Now, let’s replace the code inside that file with the following code:

package com.company;

import org.apache.camel.builder.RouteBuilder;
import org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelTestSupport;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.BeforeClass;
import org.junit.Test;
import java.io.*;

public class AppTest extends CamelTestSupport {
    static PipedInputStream in;
    static PipedOutputStream out;
    static InputStream originalIn;

    @Test()
    public void testAppRoute() throws Exception {
        out.write("This is a test message!n".getBytes());
        Thread.sleep(2000);
        assertTrue(new File("test").listFiles().length == 1);
    }
    @BeforeClass()
    public static void setup() throws IOException {
        originalIn = System.in;
        out = new PipedOutputStream();
        in = new PipedInputStream(out);
        System.setIn(in);
        FileUtils.deleteDirectory(new File("test"));
    }
    @After()
    public void teardown() throws IOException {
        out.close();
        System.setIn(originalIn);
    }
    @Override
    public boolean isCreateCamelContextPerClass() {
        return false;
    }
    @Override
    protected RouteBuilder createRouteBuilder() throws Exception {
        return new App.AppRoute();
    }
}

Now we can run mvn compile test from the console and see that the test was run and that it is successful:

Some important things to take note of in the code of our unit test are as follows:

  • We have extended the CamelTestSupport class for Junit4 (see the package it is imported from). There are also classes that support TestNG and Junit3.
  • We have overridden the method createRouteBuilder() to return RouteBuilder with our routes.
  • We made our test class create CamelContext for each test method (annotated by @Test) by making isCreateCamelContextPerClass return false.
  • System.in has been substituted with a piped stream in the startup() method and has been set back to the original value in the teardown() method. The trick is in doing it before CamelContext is created and started (now you see why we create CamelContext for each test).

Also, you may see that after we send the message into the output stream piped to System.in, we made the test thread stop for couple of seconds to ensure that the message passes through the routes into the file.

In short, our test running suite overrides System.in with a pipe stream so we can write into System.in from the code and deletes the directory test before the Test class is loaded. After the class is loaded and right before the testAppRoute() method, it creates CamelContext, using routes created by the overridden method createRouteBuilder(). Then it runs the test method which sends bytes of the message into the piped stream so that it gets into System.in where it is read by the Camel (note the n limiting the message). Camel then does what is written in the routes, that is, creates a file in the test directory. To be sure it’s done before we do assertions, we make the thread executing the test sleep for 2 seconds. Then, we assert that we do have a file in the test directory at the end of the test.

Our test works, but you see that it already gets quite hairy with piping streams and making calls to Thread.sleep()—and that’s just the beginning. We haven’t yet started using external systems, such as FTP servers, web services, and JMS queues. Another concern is the integration of our application with other systems. Some of them may not have a test environment. In this case, we can’t easily control the side effects of our application, messages that it sends and receives from those systems; or how the systems interact with our application. To solve this problem, software developers use mocking.

Summary

Thus we learned about testing a Camel application in this article.

Resources for Article:

Further resources on this subject:

Packt

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here