How to do a junit assert on a message in a logger

Question

I have some code-under-test that calls on a java logger to report its status. In the junit test code, I would like to verify that the correct log entry was made in this logger. Something along the following lines:

methodUnderTest(bool x){
    if(x)
        logger.info("x happened")
}

@Test tester(){
    // perhaps setup a logger first.
    methodUnderTest(true);
    assertXXXXXX(loggedLevel(),Level.INFO);

I suppose that this could be done with a specially adapted logger (or handler, or formatter), but I would prefer to re-use a solution that already exists. (And, to be honest, it is not clear to me how to get at the logRecord from a logger, but suppose that thatś possible.)

Answer 1

Effectively you are testing a side-effect of a dependent class. For unit testing you need only to verify that logger.info() was called with the correct parameter. Hence us a mocking framework to emulate logger and that will allow you to test your own class's behaviour.

Answer 2

Mocking is an option here, although it would be hard, because loggers are generally private static final - so setting a mock logger wouldn't be a piece of cake, or would require modification of the class under test.

You can create a custom Appender (or whatever it's called), and register it - either via a test-only configuration file, or runtime (in a way, dependent on the logging framework). And then you can get that appender (either statically, if declared in configuration file, or by its current reference, if you are plugging it runtime), and verify its contents.

Answer 3

As mentioned from the others you could use a mocking framework. For this to make work you have to expose the logger in your class (although I would propably prefere to make it package private instead of creating a public setter).

The other solution is to create a fake logger by hand. You have to write the fake logger (more fixture code) but in this case I would prefer the enhanced readability of the tests against the saved code from the mocking framework.

I would do something like this:

class FakeLogger implements ILogger {
    public List<String> infos = new ArrayList<String>();
    public List<String> errors = new ArrayList<String>();

    public void info(String message) {
        infos.add(message);
    }

    public void error(String message) {
        errors.add(message);
    }
}

class TestMyClass {
    private MyClass myClass;        
    private FakeLogger logger;        

    @Before
    public void setUp() throws Exception {
        myClass = new MyClass();
        logger = new FakeLogger();
        myClass.logger = logger;
    }

    @Test
    public void testMyMethod() {
        myClass.myMethod(true);

        assertEquals(1, logger.infos.size());
    }

}

Answer 4

I've needed this several times as well. I've put together a small sample below, which you'd want to adjust to your needs. Basically, you create your own Appender and add it to the logger you want. If you'd want to collect everything, the root logger is a good place to start, but you can use a more specific if you'd like. Don't forget to remove the Appender when you're done, otherwise you might create a memory leak. Below I've done it within the test, but setUp or @Before and tearDown or @After might be better places, depending on your needs.

Also, the implementation below collects everything in a List in memory. If you're logging a lot you might consider adding a filter to drop boring entries, or to write the log to a temporary file on disk (Hint: LoggingEvent is Serializable, so you should be able to just serialize the event objects, if your log message is.)

import org.apache.log4j.AppenderSkeleton;
import org.apache.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
import org.junit.Test;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.is;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;

public class MyTest {
    @Test
    public void test() {
        final TestAppender appender = new TestAppender();
        final Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();
        logger.addAppender(appender);
        try {
            Logger.getLogger(MyTest.class).info("Test");
        }
        finally {
            logger.removeAppender(appender);
        }

        final List<LoggingEvent> log = appender.getLog();
        final LoggingEvent firstLogEntry = log.get(0);
        assertThat(firstLogEntry.getLevel(), is(Level.INFO));
        assertThat((String) firstLogEntry.getMessage(), is("Test"));
        assertThat(firstLogEntry.getLoggerName(), is("MyTest"));
    }
}

class TestAppender extends AppenderSkeleton {
    private final List<LoggingEvent> log = new ArrayList<LoggingEvent>();

    @Override
    public boolean requiresLayout() {
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    protected void append(final LoggingEvent loggingEvent) {
        log.add(loggingEvent);
    }

    @Override
    public void close() {
    }

    public List<LoggingEvent> getLog() {
        return new ArrayList<LoggingEvent>(log);
    }
}

Answer 5

Thanks a lot for these (surprisingly) quick and helpful answers; they put me on the right way for my solution.

The codebase were I want to use this, uses java.util.logging as its logger mechanism, and I don't feel at home enough in those codes to completely change that to log4j or to logger interfaces/facades. But based on these suggestions, I 'hacked-up' a j.u.l.handler extension and that works as a treat.

A short summary follows. Extend java.util.logging.Handler:

class LogHandler extends Handler
{
    Level lastLevel = Level.FINEST;

    public Level  checkLevel() {
        return lastLevel;
    }    

    public void publish(LogRecord record) {
        lastLevel = record.getLevel();
    }

    public void close(){}
    public void flush(){}
}

Obviously, you can store as much as you like/want/need from the LogRecord, or push them all into a stack until you get an overflow.

In the preparation for the junit-test, you create a java.util.logging.Logger and add such a new LogHandler to it:

@Test tester() {
    Logger logger = Logger.getLogger("my junit-test logger");
    LogHandler handler = new LogHandler();
    handler.setLevel(Level.ALL);
    logger.setUseParentHandlers(false);
    logger.addHandler(handler);
    logger.setLevel(Level.ALL);

The call to setUseParentHandlers() is to silence the normal handlers, so that (for this junit-test run) no unnecessary logging happens. Do whatever your code-under-test needs to use this logger, run the test and assertEquality:

    libraryUnderTest.setLogger(logger);
    methodUnderTest(true);  // see original question.
    assertEquals("Log level as expected?", Level.INFO, handler.checkLevel() );
}

(Of course, you would move large part of this work into a @Before method and make assorted other improvements, but that would clutter this presentation.)