Tutorials : StrutsTestCase: The Tool for Struts Unit Testing - Part 2 :

StrutsTestCase: The Tool for Struts Unit Testing - Part 2

by Keld H. Hansen

Introduction

StrutsTestCase (STC) is a framework for testing Struts Action classes. It uses JUnit and in my first article about StrutsTestCase (STC) we looked at how STC could use a "mock object approach", where the servlet and Struts environments are simulated. STC also offers another testing possibility based on the Cactus framework, where the test is carried out in a real web server environment. 

The main topic of the current article will be about The Cactus option, but first I'd like to touch upon a couple of important features pertaining to the mock object option.

The simulated objects of the Mock Approach

The MockStrutsTestCase class has methods that'll give you access to the simulated objects. These are:

Table 1: Accessing the simulated objects

Object	Method in MockStrutsTestCase
HttpServletRequest	getRequest()
HttpServletResponse	getResponse()
HttpSession	getSession()
ActionForm (Struts)	getActionForm()
ActionServlet (Struts)	getActionServlet()

Having these objects you may inspect or modify them just as you're used to. But since they're simulated objects, STC also gives you the option to modify some of the properties which are read-only in the real Servlet and Struts APIs. So, if the simulation of an object is not quite right, you should check, if it's possible for you to set the property. STC makes this possible through a set of classes all ending with "Simulator" (cfr. the STC JavaDoc). The following are a few examples.

Header and Security Information in the Request object

A browser sends, along with the file request, a set of HTTP headers which you may access in the Servlet API through the getHeader and getHeaderNames methods. The MockStrutsTestCase doesn't initialize any header data, so if your servlet needs data from the headers (it could for example be the name of the browser), you code like this:

HttpServletRequestSimulator req =
     (HttpServletRequestSimulator)getRequest();
req.setHeader("user-agent", "Mozilla/4.0");

So the trick is to cast to a Simulator class, and then use its set-methods.

If you have a security set up with defined user-roles, it's nice that you may set the role like this: 

HttpServletRequestSimulator req = 
     (HttpServletRequestSimulator)getRequest();
req.setUserRole("admin");

These lines must of course come before the call to actionPerform().

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