Skip to content

Wakaleo Consulting

  Home
Data-driven tests with JUnit 4 and Excel E-mail

One nice feature in JUnit 4 is that of Parameterized Tests, which let you do data-driven testing in JUnit with a minimum of fuss. It's easy enough, and very useful, to set up basic data-driven tests by defining your test data directly in your Java class. But what if you want to get your test data from somewhere else? In this article, we look at how to obtain test data from an Excel spreadsheet.

Parameterized tests allow data-driven tests in JUnit. That is, rather than having different of test cases that explore various aspects of your class's (or your application's) behavior, you define sets of input parameters and expected results, and test how your application (or, more often, one particular component) behaves. Data-driven tests are great for applications involving calculations, for testing ranges, boundary conditions and corner cases.

In JUnit, a typical parameterized test might look like this:

@RunWith(Parameterized.class)
public class PremiumTweetsServiceTest {

    private int numberOfTweets;
    private double expectedFee;

    @Parameters
    public static Collection data() {
        return Arrays.asList(new Object[][] { { 0, 0.00 }, { 50, 5.00 },
                { 99, 9.90 }, { 100, 10.00 }, { 101, 10.08 }, { 200, 18},
                { 499, 41.92 }, { 500, 42 }, { 501, 42.05 }, { 1000, 67 },
                { 10000, 517 }, });
    }

    public PremiumTweetsServiceTest(int numberOfTweets, double expectedFee) {
        super();
        this.numberOfTweets = numberOfTweets;
        this.expectedFee = expectedFee;
    }

    @Test
    public void shouldCalculateCorrectFee() {
        PremiumTweetsService premiumTweetsService = new PremiumTweetsService();
        double calculatedFees = premiumTweetsService.calculateFeesDue(numberOfTweets);
        assertThat(calculatedFees, is(expectedFee));
    }
}
The test class has member variables that correspond to input values (numberOfTweets) and expected results (expectedFee). The @RunWith(Parameterzed.class) annotation gets JUnit to inject your test data into instances of your test class, via the constructor.

The test data is provided by a method with the @Parameters annotation. This method needs to return a collection of arrays, but beyond that you can implement it however you want. In the above example, we just create an embedded array in the Java code. However, you can also get it from other sources. To illustrate this point, I wrote a simple class that reads in an Excel spreadsheet and provides the data in it in this form:

@RunWith(Parameterized.class)
public class DataDrivenTestsWithSpreadsheetTest { 

    private double a;
    private double b;
    private double aTimesB;
   
    @Parameters
    public static Collection spreadsheetData() throws IOException {
        InputStream spreadsheet = new FileInputStream("src/test/resources/aTimesB.xls");
        return new SpreadsheetData(spreadsheet).getData();
    }

    public DataDrivenTestsWithSpreadsheetTest(double a, double b, double aTimesB) {
        super();
        this.a = a;
        this.b = b;
        this.aTimesB = aTimesB;
    }

    @Test
    public void shouldCalculateATimesB() {
        double calculatedValue = a * b;
        assertThat(calculatedValue, is(aTimesB));
    }
}

The Excel spreadsheet contains multiplication tables in three columns:

The SpreadsheetData class uses the Apache POI project to load data from an Excel spreadsheet and transform it into a list of Object arrays compatible with the @Parameters annotation. I've placed the source code, complete with unit-test examples on BitBucket. For the curious, the SpreadsheetData class is shown here:

public class SpreadsheetData {

    private transient Collection<Object[]> data = null;

    public SpreadsheetData(final InputStream excelInputStream) throws IOException {
        this.data = loadFromSpreadsheet(excelInputStream);
    }

    public Collection<Object[]> getData() {
        return data;
    }

    private Collection<Object[]> loadFromSpreadsheet(final InputStream excelFile)
            throws IOException {
        HSSFWorkbook workbook = new HSSFWorkbook(excelFile);

        data = new ArrayList<Object[]>();
        Sheet sheet = workbook.getSheetAt(0);

        int numberOfColumns = countNonEmptyColumns(sheet);
        List<Object[]> rows = new ArrayList<Object[]>();
        List<Object> rowData = new ArrayList<Object>();

        for (Row row : sheet) {
            if (isEmpty(row)) {
                break;
            } else {
                rowData.clear();
                for (int column = 0; column < numberOfColumns; column++) {
                    Cell cell = row.getCell(column);
                    rowData.add(objectFrom(workbook, cell));
                }
                rows.add(rowData.toArray());
            }
        }
        return rows;
    }

    private boolean isEmpty(final Row row) {
        Cell firstCell = row.getCell(0);
        boolean rowIsEmpty = (firstCell == null)
                || (firstCell.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_BLANK);
        return rowIsEmpty;
    }

    /**
     * Count the number of columns, using the number of non-empty cells in the
     * first row.
     */
    private int countNonEmptyColumns(final Sheet sheet) {
        Row firstRow = sheet.getRow(0);
        return firstEmptyCellPosition(firstRow);
    }

    private int firstEmptyCellPosition(final Row cells) {
        int columnCount = 0;
        for (Cell cell : cells) {
            if (cell.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_BLANK) {
                break;
            }
            columnCount++;
        }
        return columnCount;
    }

    private Object objectFrom(final HSSFWorkbook workbook, final Cell cell) {
        Object cellValue = null;

        if (cell.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING) {
            cellValue = cell.getRichStringCellValue().getString();
        } else if (cell.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC) {
            cellValue = getNumericCellValue(cell);
        } else if (cell.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_BOOLEAN) {
            cellValue = cell.getBooleanCellValue();
        } else if (cell.getCellType()  ==Cell.CELL_TYPE_FORMULA) {
            cellValue = evaluateCellFormula(workbook, cell);
        }

        return cellValue;
    
    }

    private Object getNumericCellValue(final Cell cell) {
        Object cellValue;
        if (DateUtil.isCellDateFormatted(cell)) {
            cellValue = new Date(cell.getDateCellValue().getTime());
        } else {
            cellValue = cell.getNumericCellValue();
        }
        return cellValue;
    }

    private Object evaluateCellFormula(final HSSFWorkbook workbook, final Cell cell) {
        FormulaEvaluator evaluator = workbook.getCreationHelper()
                .createFormulaEvaluator();
        CellValue cellValue = evaluator.evaluate(cell);
        Object result = null;
        
        if (cellValue.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_BOOLEAN) {
            result = cellValue.getBooleanValue();
        } else if (cellValue.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC) {
            result = cellValue.getNumberValue();
        } else if (cellValue.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING) {
            result = cellValue.getStringValue();   
        }
        
        return result;
    }
}

Data-driven testing is a great way to test calculation-based applications more thoroughly. In a real-world application, this Excel spreadsheet could be provided by the client or the end-user with the business logic encoded within the spreadsheet. (The POI library handles numerical calculations just fine, though it seems to have a bit of trouble with calculations using dates). In this scenario, the Excel spreadsheet becomes part of your acceptance tests, and helps to define your requirements, allows effective test-driven development of the code itself, and also acts as part of your acceptance tests.

Tags See All Tags Add New Tag...

Please Enter New Tags Separated By Comma's
  Or Close

Agile  JUnit  TDD 

Trackback(0)
Comments (4)Add Comment
0
Need Data-driven tests with JUnit 3 and Excel
written by Sawpnil, November 26, 2010
Hi,

I am an QA engineer, trying to expose myself in selenium with Junit framework. I am using Junit3 and above explanation is for Junit 4 can you please elaborate this for juint3.

Thanks in advance
Swapnil
0
Try using JUnit 4
written by John Ferguson Smart, November 26, 2010
Parameterized test will only work with JUnit 4. You probably should move to JUnit 4 anyway, as JUnit 3 is very dated now.

But if you are looking at automated web testing with Selenium, you might want to check out the talk I gave on Page Objects and Selenium 2 ( http://www.wakaleo.com/resourc...ge-objects), as it is a more robust approach.
0
...
written by lexx, June 01, 2011
Hi I have an issue when running this code. It seems like it required to have MS excel running in your PC. Can we run this code without installing MS excel?

thanks.
0
...
written by asdgsgsd, January 06, 2012
you can go for CSV file and Treat the file as plain text.
but you have to split the column data using comma and convert the numbers from string

Write comment

busy