Spring Web Flow - How can I set up unit test with values already in conversationScope?

Question

I am working on a project using Spring Web Flow 2.0.

I am trying to unit test a flow that begins with a decision state. The decision state checks the value of an object that is on the conversationScope. I cannot figure out how to insert a value into the conversationScope for the unit test.

I have tried:

getConversationScope().put("someName", value);
MockExternalContext context = new MockExternalContext();
startFlow(context);

However, it seems that when I call startFlow(context) the value is cleared.

I also tried:

MockExternalContext context = new MockExternalContext();
setCurrentState("someDecisionState");
resumeFlow(context)

But the test fails with an error telling me that I cannot resume from a decision state, only from a view state.

Does anyone know how I can insert mock values on the conversationScope so that I may test these cases?

Answer 1

It's not obvious, but I came up with this:

public void testFoo() {
    FlowExecution flowExecution = getFlowExecutionFactory().createFlowExecution(getFlowDefinition());
    updateFlowExecution(flowExecution);
    flowExecution.getConversationScope().put("fooBar", "goo");
    flowExecution.start(null, new MockExternalContext());        
    assertCurrentStateEquals("fooView");
}

I had to dig into the underlying AbstractXmlFlowExecutionTests.startFlow() to see how it was instantiating the FlowExecution, and copy and paste some of that into the unit test.

Here's the test web flow.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<flow xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow/spring-webflow-2.0.xsd">

    <action-state id="decideFoo">
        <evaluate expression="conversationScope.fooBar" />
        <transition on="goo" to="fooView" />
        <transition on="gar" to="barView" />
    </action-state>

    <view-state id="fooView" />

    <view-state id="barView" />

</flow>