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Introduction

Struts 2 supports running unit tests of methods in the Struts Action class with the Struts 2 JUnit plugin. The JUnit plugin allows you to test methods of an Action class from within the Struts 2 framework. The Struts Servlet filter and interceptors fire just as if your application was running on a Servlet container.

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To use the Struts 2 plugin to ensure the Strut 2 framework runs as part of the test, you need to have your JUnit test class extend StrutsTestCase (see RegisterTest class in the example application).

To test the validate method we want Struts to call the Struts action that will cause the Action class's validate and execute methods to be run. In the example application this action is register.

	  <action name="register" class="org.apache.struts.register.action.Register" method="execute">
		<result name="success">/thankyou.jsp</result>
		<result name="input">/register.jsp</result>
	  </action>

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The input fields for the form have the following name values: personBean.firstName, personBean.lastName, personBean.email, and personBean.age. When the user fills out those fields Struts will take the values and provide them to the appropriate set methods of the personBean object. So as part of the test I need to simulate the user filling out these form fields. The StrutsTestCase provides a request object (of type MockHttpServletRequest) that I can use to set these values in the request scope.

@Test
public void testExecuteValidationPasses() throws Exception() {

  request.setParameter("personBean.firstName", "Bruce");

  request.setParameter("personBean.lastName", "Phillips");
		
  request.setParameter("personBean.email", "bphillips@ku.edu");
		
  request.setParameter("personBean.age", "19");

  ActionProxy actionProxy = getActionProxy("/register.action");

  Register action = (Register) actionProxy.getAction() ;

  assertNotNull("The action is null but should not be.", action);

  String result - actionProxy.execute();

  assertEquals("The execute method did not return " + ActionSupport.SUCCESS + " but should have.", ActionSupport.SUCCESS, result);
  
}

The first statements in the test method use the request object to set the values of any request parameters. These simulate the values the user would enter into the form fields. Note how the first argument to setParameter is the same as the value of the name attribute in the Struts textfield tag in the register.jsp page.

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To test that validation should fail, I just need to have a test method that doesn't provide input for a form field. For example, in the validate method of the Register Action class, is a test to ensure the user has entered some information for the personBean.firstName input field. In the test method I would just not use the request object to set a parameter for that field.

@Test
public void testExecuteValidationFailsMissingFirstName() throws Exception() {

  //request.setParameter("personBean.firstName", "Bruce");

  request.setParameter("personBean.lastName", "Phillips");
		
  request.setParameter("personBean.email", "bphillips@ku.edu");
		
  request.setParameter("personBean.age", "19");

  ActionProxy actionProxy = getActionProxy("/register.action");

  Register action = (Register) actionProxy.getAction() ;

  assertNotNull("The action is null but should not be.", action);

  String result - actionProxy.execute();

  assertEquals("The execute method did not return " + ActionSupport.INPUT + " but should have.", ActionSupport.INPUT, result);
  
}

In the last assertEquals statement my test checks that the Struts 2 framework returned "input" as that is what the Struts 2 framework will return if the validation adds a field or action error.

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