Embedded Kafka for Spring Boot Testing without using Docker

Sometimes it is nice to set up an embedded Kafka broker for testing without the need to have Docker installed (e.g. for using testcontainers-lib). The following snippet shows, how to set up an embedded Kafka instance for testing for a Spring Boot project. Setup Using Maven, this is our Spring Boot project with dependencies needed: pom.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <parent> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>(1) <version>2.6.4</version> <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository --> </parent> <groupId>com.hascode.tutorial</groupId> <artifactId>kafka-testing</artifactId> <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <properties> <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding> <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding> <java.version>17</java.version> <maven.compiler.source>${java.version}</maven.compiler.source> <maven.compiler.target>${java.version}</maven.compiler.target> <kafka.version>3.1.0</kafka.version>(2) </properties> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.kafka</groupId> <artifactId>spring-kafka</artifactId>(3) </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.kafka</groupId> <artifactId>spring-kafka-test</artifactId>(4) <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency>(5) <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId> <artifactId>junit-jupiter-api</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId> <artifactId>junit-jupiter-engine</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.junit.platform</groupId> <artifactId>junit-platform-launcher</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> [..] </project> ...

May 25, 2022 · 4 min · 839 words · Micha Kops

JUnit5 Java Maven Snippet

Goals Use JUnit Maven BOM for version alignment Add minimal dependencies for JUnit5 Java Projekt Setup Excerpt from the Maven project’s pom.xml: <dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.junit</groupId> <artifactId>junit-bom</artifactId> <version>5.7.1</version> <type>pom</type> <scope>import</scope> </dependency> </dependencies> </dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId> <artifactId>junit-jupiter</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> </dependencies> JUnit5 does not work with older versions of the Maven Compiler Plugin and the Surefire Plugin used for test execution. Setting their versions in the pom.xml is done like this: ...

May 14, 2021 · 1 min · 85 words · Micha Kops

Using Throwaway Containers for Integration Testing with Java, JUnit 5 and Testcontainers.

A lot of boilerplate code is written when developers need to test their applications with different connected systems like databases, stream platforms and other collaborators. Docker allows to handle those dependencies but there is still some glue code required to bind the container’s lifecycle and the configuration to the concrete integration test. Testcontainers is a testing library that offers lightweight throwaway instances of anything able to run in a Docker container, with bindings to configure the specific containers and also provides wrappers to manage our own custom containers. ...

January 30, 2019 · 6 min · 1110 words · Micha Kops

Setting up Kafka Brokers for Testing with Kafka-Unit

When writing test for applications that interact with Kafka brokers we often need to setup a decent environment including an instance of Kafka and ZooKeeper. Though Kafka ships with some classes for testing, setting up a simple testing environment is quite easier with the kafka-unit library that offers JUnit test rule support or a fast programmatic setup within no time. In the following short example, I’d like to show how create a simple setup using Maven, Surefire and kafka-unit. ...

March 28, 2018 · 4 min · 825 words · Micha Kops

Implementing, Testing and Running Procedures for Neo4j

A lot of features are already included in the Neo4j graph database system but sometimes we want to extends its capabilities and implement functions and procedures by ourselves that we may reuse. In the following tutorial I will demonstrate how to implement a procedure for Neo4j, how to write and run tests using JUnit and an embedded graph database and last but not least how to setup Neo4j with Docker and our stored procedure installed in no time. ...

February 27, 2018 · 7 min · 1296 words · Micha Kops

Using JUnit 5 Parameterized Tests, Argument Sources and Converters

With JUnit 5 the possibilities to write parameterized tests have changed and improved a lot. The following short overview covers all new types of possible parameter sources for JUnit 5 tests as well as the new conversion API for test arguments. In addition we’re showing how parameterized tests were written in JUnit 4. Figure 1. Running JUnit5 in IntelliJ About We will be covering all available types of parameter sources in the following sections – all that you need as a prerequisite is Java ™, Maven and a few minutes of your time. ...

August 19, 2017 · 9 min · 1781 words · Micha Kops

Assuring Architectural Rules with ArchUnit

Maintaining architecture rules and constraints for a specific software project or an application is not easy as textual documentation is easily forgotten after a while and hard to verify. ArchUnit is a testing library that allows developers and software architects to write down such rules as executable tests that may be run by the development teams and the integration servers. In the following article I will demonstrate the basic features of this library by applying rules and constraints to an existing application. ...

July 3, 2017 · 9 min · 1892 words · Micha Kops

Template Driven Test POJO Generation with Fixture Factory and Java

In our tests we often need to create a bunch of test-objects that are populated with random-data. This data needs to follow specific rules as identifiers need to be unique or must be incremented, string-properties must follow special conventions and so on. In the following short tutorial I will demonstrate how to generate such test data using the Fixture Factory library. Figure 1. Fixture Factory and JUnit...

June 20, 2017 · 8 min · 1689 words · Micha Kops

Writing BDD-Style Webservice Tests with Karate and Java

There is a new testing framework out there called Karate that is build on top of the popular Cucumber framework. Karate makes it easy to script interactions with out web-services under test and verify the results. In addition it offers us a lot of useful features like parallelization, script/feature re-use, data-tables, JsonPath and XPath support, gherkin syntax, switchable staging-configurations and many others. In the following tutorial we’ll be writing different scenarios and features for a real-world RESTful web-service to demonstrate some of its features. ...

April 6, 2017 · 12 min · 2549 words · Micha Kops

Handling System Properties, Environment Variables, STDOUT/STDERR in JUnit Tests with System Rules

When important data is written to STDIN/STDOUT and an application relies on specific system properties or environment variables, writing tests is getting more complicated. System Rules is a collection of JUnit rules that helps us writing Java tests for everything that deals with java.lang.System. In the following short examples I’d like to demonstrate how to deal with system properties, environment variables, STDOUT and STDERR and capturing both for testing e.g. for some golden master refactoring. ...

December 19, 2016 · 4 min · 718 words · Micha Kops