What is the best way to test job flow in Spring-Batch?

Question

I've got a complicated batch application, and I want to test that my assumptions about flow are correct.

Here's a much simplified version of what I'm working with:

<beans>
  <batch:job id="job1">
    <batch:step id="step1" next="step2">
      <batch:tasklet ref="someTask1"/>
    </batch:step>
    <batch:step id="step2.master">
      <batch:partition partitioner="step2Partitioner"
            step="step2" />
      <batch:next on="*" to="step3" />
      <batch:next on="FAILED" to="step4" />
    </batch:step>
    <batch:step id="step3" next="step3">
      <batch:tasklet ref="someTask1"/>
    </batch:step>
    <batch:step id="step4" next="step4">
      <batch:tasklet ref="someTask1"/>
    </batch:step>
  </batch:job>
  <batch:job id="job2">
    <batch:step id="failingStep">
      <batch:tasklet ref="failingTasklet"/>
    </batch:step>
  </batch:job>

  <bean id="step2Partitioner" class="org.springframework.batch.core.partition.support.MultiResourcePartitioner" scope="step">
    <property name="resources" value="file:${file.test.resources}/*" />
  </bean>

  <bean id="step2" class="org.springframework.batch.core.step.job.JobStep">
    <property name="job" ref="job2" />
    <property name="jobLauncher" ref="jobLauncher" />
    <property name="jobRepository" ref="jobRepository" />
  </bean>
</beans>

Job1 is the job I want to test. I really only want to test the transition of step2.master to step3 or step4. I don't want to test step1 at all...

However, I want to keep Job1's specification intact, since this test is testing the configuration, not the underlying actions. I already have acceptance tests to test end-to-end stuff. This example is so I can write targeted tests for small variations without creating seperate end-to-end tests for each edge case.

What I want to test is that when the job inside step2 fails, step2.master will forward me on to step 4 and not step 3. Is there a good way to test this?

Answer 1

You can replace step2 with a mock implementation that always fail and use a StepExecutionListener to check whether or not step3 and step4 were called.

There are good examples here: http://static.springsource.org/spring-batch/reference/html/testing.html#endToEndTesting