Deploy Spring Boot Applications With More Confidence and Fewer Regressions
Boost Your Confidence and Productivity With This Self-Paced and On-Demand Video Course With More Than 130 Video and Text Lessons
Before taking this Masterclass
After taking this Masterclass
TL;DR: This online course is a deep-dive on effectively writing unit, integration, and end-to-end tests for Spring Boot applications to become more confident and productive.
Knowing How to Effectively Test Separates the Serious Engineer from a Hobby Developer
“Quality is not an act. It is a habit.” – Aristotle
Do you remember writing your first Spring Boot application? You were excited that you now finally expose data via an API and can connect to a database.
Testing your application was the last thing you could think of at this moment.
Once you start using Spring Boot in a professional environment there is no way around testing. Testing your application gives you confidence, fearless deployments on Friday afternoons and a good night of sleep.
Most tutorials and courses about testing barely go beyond the Hello World example of testing a calculator.
This does not prepare you for the real world where your application faces database access, external systems, messaging system, network, etc.
There are so many great libraries and techniques out there for the Java ecosystem when it comes to testing. Mastering them all, right after you understand the basics about Spring Boot, is hard.
Testing is joyful once you are familiar with all the great tools you have access to: JUnit, Mockito, AssertJ, Hamcrest, JsonPath, JSONAssert, Testcontainers, Selenium, LocalStack, Awaitility, and not to forget the whole Spring Testing support.
Especially with Spring Boot you get so much functionality when it comes to testing. What you need are recipes to tackle testing different parts of your applications and then apply them.
This Testing Spring Boot applications Masterclass is all about making you an expert when it comes to testing Spring Boot applications in an efficient way.
All You Need to Know About Testing
Spring Boot Applications
The number of testing libraries is huge in the Java ecosystem. One might get overwhelmed with all the different solutions.
This online Masterclass guides you through every testing library you need to verify your Spring Boot application is working as expected.
After working with this course, you not only have recipes at hand to test different parts of your application, but you are also familiar with industry best practice.
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Watch Four Preview Lessons of the Masterclass
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Enroll now and never worry about testing your Spring Boot Application again!
NEWS: Up-to-date with Spring Boot 3 and Java 17
Your Journey to More Confident Releases
Stop The Firefighting Mode
Whether you just started with Spring Boot or are already using it in several projects, this Spring Boot Testing Masterclass guides you through all relevant parts of testing Spring Boot applications.
Understand What and How to Test
You are unsure which parts of your application to test? There is a good chance that you are not focusing on the relevant parts of your application you should test.
Go Beyond Trivial Unit Testing
After working with this course you'll have recipes at hand to test all non-trivial parts of your application like database access, HTTP communication, using cloud services (e.g. SQS from AWS), etc.
Master Different Testing Libraries
Not only will you be able to use all presented testing libraries for your application, but also understand what they are about and when to use which. Knowing when to use which library is a key skill.
Testing Best Practices
This Masterclass includes an own section about industry best practices for testing applications. Make use of knowledge from years of writing tests for enterprise applications.
Here’s What Course Students Say About This Masterclass
Wim Deblauwe
Software Engineer - Homepage
Philip has made a fantastic overview of the full testing landscape of Spring. The videos are clear and explain details and common pitfalls in great depth. Looking forward to the rest of the course.
PS: Wim is also book author of Taming Thymeleaf and Practical Guide to Building an API Back End with Spring Boot.
Anton Ždanov
Full Stack Developer - LinkedIn
For me testing a Spring application seemed like a challenge involving digging through numerous blog posts, documentation for JUnit, Mockito, and Spring Testing Reference which provide valuable information but are spread out and don't necessarily show the best practices.
After watching the Testing Spring Boot Applications Masterclass course I feel more confident in writing different types of tests for my apps. The course, videos, and the GitHub repository were of invaluable use to me demonstrating various testing mechanics the Spring ecosystem provides, and I will keep referencing the course materials in the future.
The application that is tested in the course is quite complex and covers a lot of real-world testing challenges one might encounter, which I found immensely useful for seeing the bigger picture.
Detailed review of the Masterclass on his blog
I got an opportunity to review the course I find it wonderful for learning how to test Spring Boot applications leveraging modern testing frameworks and libraries....
I would highly recommend Masterclass for anybody working with Spring Boot applications.
Read the full review here.
What You'll Learn
Overview of the different Masterclass Modules
1
Module 1: Introduction
We'll start with an application walk-through, to get you familiar with the code base we test throughout the Masterclass.
At the end of this module you'll be able to start the Book Reviewr application and its infrastructure components on your machine.
2
Module 2: Testing With the Spring Boot Starter Test
Getting familiar with the swiss-army knife that every Spring Boot project includes: Spring Boot Starter Test.
We'll cover all testing libraries that come with this starter and take a detailed look into testing with JUnit 5 and mocking with Mockito.
3
Module 3: Testing Database Access
Start writing efficient tests for your database layer while utilizing Spring Boot test features like @DataJpaTest, TestEntityManager, @Sql, etc.
Furthermore, with this module you'll start using Testcontainers to replace the default in-memory database, learn how you can pre-populate your database, and understand the pitfalls when writing tests where the EntityManger is involved.
4
Module 4: Testing the Web Layer
MockMvc to the rescue!
Learn how to effectively test your web-layer (@RestController and @Controller) in isolation. You have your endpoints secured with Spring Security? No problem! There is great support available to ensure only authenticated users with the correct privileges reach your endpoints.
5
Module 5: Testing Further Slices of our Application
Ever wanted to know how to test your WebClient or RestTemplate HTTP calls? How to ensure your business logic is working as expected and how to verify your messaging controllers?
In this module, we'll tackle further slices to effectively test different parts of our application in isolation. In addition, we'll write our own test slice.
6
Module 6: Writing Tests With the Whole Spring Context
It's time to write integration tests using @SpringBootTest!
With the knowledge of previous modules, we can mock almost any external infrastructure component, except Keycloak. We'll introduce WireMock to mock the HTTP interaction with the identity provider or any other system during application startup (e.g. Salesforce, Stripe, SAP, etc.).
7
Module 7: Writing Web Tests
Writing end-to-end tests to ensure users can interact with your application.
Having automated web-tests for your happy-paths can literally save your ass. We'll make the most of Selenium and Selenide by verifying the Book Reviwr application without any manual WebDriver setup (including VNC recording, screenshots on failure, etc.).
8
Module 8: Testing Best Practices
Build tool configuration, test strategies, naming strategies, testing static methods, working with time, test report visualization within your CI (e.g. Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps) server, etc.
... and last but not least: Drastically reduce your build times with Spring's Context Caching mechanism.
Your The Course Instructor:
Philip (rieckpil)
I'm an independent IT consultant living in Berlin. I started working with Java back in 2015 and I used Spring Boot ever since. Automated testing was always one of my biggest pain points as I didn't know how to tackle is.
As of today, testing is an integral part of my daily work.
I'm teaching Java topics on YouTube since 2018 and I'm writing content about the Java ecosystem on my blog since 2017.
More than 10.000 course students have enrolled in my online courses. Besides that, I'm also actively helping developers on Stack Overflow (10k+ reputation) with their questions around testing Java applications.
Once I understood the ins and outs of the Java testing landscape, writing tests makes as much fun as writing production code for me. I'm a won around TDD (Test Driven Development) practitioner and regularly share testing techniques among my colleagues and clients.
Here’s What People Are Saying About the Course Instructor
Tom Hombergs
Founder of reflectoring.io
Philip is a dedicated developer and doesn't give up until he has understood the details of a topic.
In his courses and articles, he transfers this knowledge to you and they leave you smarter than before.
Looking forward to working with you in the future, Philip
Vlad Mihalcea
Founder of vladmihalcea.com
Philip is a very skilled content creator who managed to publish high quality articles and videos that cover a wide range of topics, like Spring, Java EE, or Jakarta EE.
He pays a lot of attention to details, so if you enjoyed his articles and videos, you are surely going to love his video courses.
Marco Behler
Founder of marcobehler.com
How can you not love what Philip is doing?
Tons of actionable tutorials and content across the Jakarta EE and Spring universes.
Highly recommended!
Philip's Recent Spring Boot Testing Conference Talks
Learn More About the Course Instructor and Spring Boot Testing Expert Philip
Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Testing Spring Boot Applications
Testing is an integral part of software development, and unfortunately, some teams treat this topic neglectfully.
This talk will give you an overview of best practices, pitfalls, and recipes for testing Spring Boot applications.
Philip shares the things that he wish he had known when he started testing Spring Boot applications.
Watch the talk on YouTube.
How Fixing a Broken Window Cut Down Our Build Time
By 50%
Our journey of getting rid of @DirtiesContext on top of an abstract test class (aka. the "broken window") that made reusing the Spring TestContext impossible and resulted in ever-growing build times.
After fixing this "broken window", our overall build time went down by 50% from 25 to 12 minutes.
Watch the talk on YouTube.
Why You MUST Invest Time in Learning How to Test Spring Boot Applications
When was your last outage or downtime caused by a bug that could have been prevented with a test? How much did your company lost in direct revenue or indirectly by losing customer satisfaction? How less productive are you and your coworkers because of missing automated tests?
Putting in numbers is hard, but I guess every minute a non-trivial application is not working as expected results in costs or lost revenue of $100.000+.
On the other side, consider how uncertainty paralyses you when you want to refactor an existing code base that lacks tests. Or you are new to a project and want to introduce a new feature. Testing things afterwards manually is a cumbersome and repetitive tasks.
We, as engineers, are lucky to have tools around us that can automate such cumbersome and repetitive tasks. So let's start using them by learning how to effectively test our applications.
Once you know your testing toolkit, writing tests becomes joyful.
Your Path Towards More Confidence & Productivity
Getting Started
Keeping the Course Content Up-to-Date
Changelog
Spring Boot 3 Migration
Setup for Java Development
Infrastructure Setup With Docker Compose
Application Architecture
Maven Dependencies
Flyway Migration Scripts
Application Configuration
AWS SDK Overrides
Introduction to the Backend Code
Keycloak Configuration Walkthrough
Application Walkthrough
Anatomy of the dependency
Managing library versions
Writing Your First Test With JUnit 5
Verify the Test Outcome With Assertions
Lifecycle of a Test
More on Assertions
Specifying the Name of a Test
Write Parameterized Tests
Your First JUnit 5 Extension
Happy-Path Testing
Parallelization of Tests
Introduction to the Class Under Test
Mocking Method Calls With Mockito
Your First Test With Mockito
Mocking the Behaviour of the Repository
Instrumenting a Mock to Throw an Exception
Full Happy-Path Test With Mockito
Capture Method Arguments and Verify Invocations
Introduction to Hamcrest
Introduction to AssertJ
Introduction to JSONAssert
Introduction to JsonPath
Spring Boot Starter Test Conference Talk
Introduction to the JPA Domain Model
What to Test When Using Spring Data JPA
Start Using @DataJpaTest
Resolving context startup errors
Why and When to Use the TestEntityManager
Pitfalls of the First Level Cache
Transactional Support
Using P6SPY for More Insights
The Rationale Behind Not Using In-Memory Databases
Using Testcontainers for the First Time
Managing the Lifecycle of a Container
Improve Build Times by Reusing Containers
Solutions to Pre-Populate Your Database
Testing the Native Query
Recap of the Database Access Module
Why Unit Tests Are Not Enough
Introduction to @WebMvcTest
Getting the Setup Right
Defining On Which Level to Mock
Your First Test With @WebMvcTest
More Tests for the BookController
Introduction to the ReviewController
Verifying the First Behavior
Testing the First Secured Endpoint
Additional Ways to Provide Authentication
Happy-Path Testing For Creating Reviews
Ensure We Validate Incoming Reviews
Access to Role-Based Secured Endpoints
Recap and Learnings of This Module
Introduction to Testing HTTP Clients
The Power of @RestClientTest
First Test Using the MockRestServiceServer
More Assertions for the Happy-Path
Handling Partial Responses
Test a Failure of the Remote System
More Expectations on the HTTP Request
Required Setup for the MockWebServer
Testing the Happy-Path Using MockWebServer
Verify Behavior on Partial Responses
Testing Failure of the Remote System
Implement and Test Retry Mechanism for More Resiliency
Which Logic to Verify
Getting the Setup Right for Testing the ReviewService
Verify the First Error Scenario
Ensure We Don't Store Reviews With Bad Quality
Happy-Path Testing For Storing a Review
Choosing the Application Part for Isolated Testing
Introduction to LocalStack
Creating a Spring Application Context With Only One Message Listener
Understanding the Spring Cloud AWS Auto Configuration
Overriding the AWS SQS Client
Creating a Local SQS Queue and Applying the Configuration
Happy-Path Testing For the Whole Listener Process
New Spring Cloud AWS Sliced Test Context Annotation
Recap on How to Create a Sliced Spring Context for Testing
What's Currently Missing to Start the Whole Context
Creating an Integration Test Profile
First Try to Start the Whole Context
Introducing WireMock to Mock HTTP Communication
Creating an ApplicationContextInitializer for WireMock
Mocking the OpenID Configuration Response
Mocking the JWKS (JSON Web Key Set) Response
Making Use Of the WebTestClient to Access the Backend
Creating a Valid JWT to Access Our Endpoints
Verifying the Book Synchronization Process
Refactor Our WebClient to Mock the HTTP Response
Extract Integration Test Setup to a Central Place
Ensure Users Can Create Reviews
Develop the Missing API Endpoint Test-Driven (TDD)
Test the Statistics Endpoint With Reviews From Multiple Users
Recap of This Module About Integration Tests
What's Missing Compared to Writing Integration Tests
Creating a Web Test Application Profile
Using Testcontainers to Start the Docker Compose Environment
Using Selenide to Write Concise Web Tests
Writing the First Test With Selenide
Making Screenshots During Test Execution
Further Hints on the Web Test Setup
Using Testcontainers With Selenide
Recording the Web Test With a Video
Inserting Reviews During the Web Test
Verifying the Outcome of the Test
Refactoring the Test to Page Objects
Recap on Writing Web Tests
Defining Your Own Test Strategy