junit assert in thread throws exception

Question

What am I doing wrong that an exception is thrown instead of showing a failure, or should I not have assertions inside threads?

 @Test
 public void testComplex() throws InterruptedException {
  int loops = 10;
  for (int i = 0; i < loops; i++) {
   final int j = i;
   new Thread() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
     ApiProxy.setEnvironmentForCurrentThread(env);//ignore this
     new CounterFactory().getCounter("test").increment();//ignore this too
     int count2 = new CounterFactory().getCounter("test").getCount();//ignore
     assertEquals(j, count2);//here be exceptions thrown. this is line 75
    }
   }.start();
  }
  Thread.sleep(5 * 1000);
  assertEquals(loops, new CounterFactory().getCounter("test").getCount());
}

StackTrace

Exception in thread "Thread-26" junit.framework.AssertionFailedError: expected:<5> but was:<6>
    at junit.framework.Assert.fail(Assert.java:47)
    at junit.framework.Assert.failNotEquals(Assert.java:277)
    at junit.framework.Assert.assertEquals(Assert.java:64)
    at junit.framework.Assert.assertEquals(Assert.java:195)
    at junit.framework.Assert.assertEquals(Assert.java:201)
    at com.bitdual.server.dao.ShardedCounterTest$3.run(ShardedCounterTest.java:77)

Answer 1

The JUnit framework captures only assertion errors in the main thread running the test. It is not aware of exceptions from within new spawn threads. In order to do it right, you should communicate the thread's termination state to the main thread. You should synchronize the threads correctly, and use some kind of shared variable to indicate the nested thread's outcome.

EDIT:

Here is a generic solution that can help:

class AsynchTester{
    private Thread thread;
    private volatile AssertionError exc; 

    public AsynchTester(final Runnable runnable){
        thread = new Thread(new Runnable(){
            public void run(){
                try{            
                    runnable.run();
                }catch(AssertionError e){
                    exc = e;
                }
            }
        });
    }

    public void start(){
        thread.start();
    }

    public void test() throws InterruptedException{
        thread.join();
        if (exc != null)
            throw exc;
    }
}

You should pass it the runnable in the constructor, and then you simply call start() to activate, and test() to validate. The test method will wait if necessary, and will throw the assertion error in the main thread's context.

Answer 2

This is a simple AssertionError. The JUnit Framework expected the variable j to be 5, but got 6. This just means that the framework found an error.

This obvious example would generate the same AssertionException:

int number = 5;
assertEquals(number,6);

Answer 3

Where multiple worker threads are concerned, such as in the original question, simply joining one of them is not sufficient. Ideally, you'll want to wait for all worker threads to complete while still reporting assertion failures back to the main thread, such as in Eyal's answer.

Here's a simple example of how to do this using ConcurrentUnit:

public class MyTest extends ConcurrentTestCase {
    @Test
    public void testComplex() throws Throwable {
        int loops = 10;
        for (int i = 0; i < loops; i++) {
            new Thread(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    threadAssertEquals(1, 1);
                    resume();
                }
            }).start();
        }

        threadWait(100, loops); // Wait for 10 resume calls
    }
}