Spring maven - run specific tests (via annotations or maven profile)

Question

Using a Spring maven context, I would like to run specific tests based on a maven profile. I would like to have an easy way of tagging the test groups. If possible I would like to use the annotations. Which options are there, like maven command line parameters, maven profiles specification, etc.

Say I have the following tests:

Example:

// annotation("integration")
public class GeopointFormatterTest {
    @Test
    public void testIntegration1() {  ...  }   
    @Test
    public void testIntegration2() {  ...  }

Annotations like @Profile (which is for creating beans) and @ActiveProfile (which is for selecting specific profiles for creating beans) cannot be used for selecting tests, of course. All tests just run for statements like:

mvn clean install -Pdevelopment

mvn clean install -Pdevelopment -Dspring.profiles.active=acceptance

mvn clean install -Pdevelopment -Dspring.profiles.active=integration

As suggested, I used also @IfProfileValue. This is a good way for selecting tests based on system property values. System property values can be overruled by a CustomProfileValueSource class, like in: @ProfileValueSourceConfiguration(CustomProfileValueSource.class)

EDIT and ALTERNATIVE

The GREAT answers below focus on JUnit's @Category mechanism. Thanks to all!

A different approach is via these steps: [1] set a property within a maven profile and [2] use the property to skip tests via the of the standard surefire test plugin.

[1] Setting the properties via a profile:

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>integrationtests</id>
        <properties>
            <integration.skip>false</integration.skip>
            <acceptance.skip>true</acceptance.skip>
        </properties>
    </profile>
    ... other profiles

[2] Using the properties in the surefire test plugin to skip tests.

<build>
   <plugins>
      <plugin>
         <!-- Run the integration test-->
         <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
         <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
         <version>${surefire.plugin.version}</version>
         <configuration>
            <skipTests>${acceptance.skip}</skipTests>

Start in maven: mvn clean install –Pintegrationtests

Answer 1

Take a look at junit categories.

You'd tag your tests with specific category annotations

public interface FastTests { /* category marker */ }
public interface SlowTests { /* category marker */ }

@Category(SlowTests.class)
public class A {
    @Test public void a() {}
}

then form a suite like

@RunWith(Categories.class)
@IncludeCategory({FastTests.class})
@SuiteClasses({A.class, B.class})
public static class FastTestSuite {
     //
}

And then run it with

mvn -Dtest=FastTestSuite test

Note also that if you don't want to manually specify your unit test case classes in the suite class, you can also use the help of ClasspathSuite and then just limit based on categories.

Answer 2

You will probably need to categorize your tests using the @Category annotation. A complete example has been provided in the Surefire documentation provided here - search for the string Using JUnit Categories.

Assuming that you have categorized your tests accordingly, you will now be able to setup one or more profiles in your maven build which will trigger these tests as per the category

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>slow-tests</id>
        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>2.11</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <groups>com.mycompany.SlowTests</groups>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>
    <profile>
        <id>fast-tests</id>
        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>2.11</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <groups>com.mycompany.FastTests</groups>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>
</profiles>

You can specify one or more profiles on the command line when running the tests.

mvn test -Pslow-tests,fast-tests