trying to understand Spring's @RunWith, @ContextConfiguration; and ANT

Question

I'm using Spring's test annotations for the first time, and trying to understand how they fit togther. The doc says to use @RunWith to specify test runner and @ContextConfiguration to specify context config xml file. I want to run these tests through ant's JUnit task.

I read that @RunWith is a JUnit annotation, so ant's JUnit task should not have any problem processing it. But @ContextConfiguration is a Spring annotation, so how does JUnit process it? Or does Spring convert the test class into a subclass of JUnit TestCase and somehow specify the test runner? How do they actually work together?

Answer 1

By @RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class) you tell JUnit to use an other Runner. In this case the SpringJUnit4ClassRunner Runner. The Spring Runner then handles the @ContextConfiguration Annotation.

So it works, no matter if you start the test from Eclipse, an ohter IDE, command line, Maven or Ant.