This example shows how to use Spring integration testing with JUnit 4.

For JUnit 5 check out this tutorial.

Example

Creating a simple Spring application.

AppConfig

package com.logicbig.example;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
@ComponentScan("com.logicbig.example")
public class AppConfig {
}

Order

package com.logicbig.example;

public class Order {
    private String item;
    private int qty;

    public Order(String item, int qty) {
        this.item = item;
        this.qty = qty;
    }

    public String getItem() {
        return item;
    }

    public int getQty() {
        return qty;
    }
}

OrderService

package com.logicbig.example;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

import java.util.List;

@Service
public class OrderService {

    public String placeOrders(List<Order> orders) {
        //just a dummy service
        return orders.size() + " orders placed";
    }
}

ShoppingCart

package com.logicbig.example;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.ConfigurableBeanFactory;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Scope;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

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

@Component
@Scope(ConfigurableBeanFactory.SCOPE_PROTOTYPE)
public class ShoppingCart {
    @Autowired
    private OrderService orderService;
    private List<Order> orders = new ArrayList<>();

    public void addItem(String name, int qty) {
        orders.add(new Order(name, qty));
    }

    public String checkout() {
        String msg = orderService.placeOrders(orders);
        orders.clear();
        return msg;
    }
}

Test class

By annotating test classes with @RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class) or the shorter @RunWith(SpringRunner.class) variant, we can write standard JUnit 4 unit and integration tests. That means we can have full support of spring context loading and dependency injection of the beans in our tests.

package com.logicbig.example;

import org.junit.Assert;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringRunner;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = AppConfig.class)
public class ShoppingCartTest {

    @Autowired
    private ShoppingCart shoppingCart;

    @Test
    public void testCheckout() {
        shoppingCart.addItem("Item1", 3);
        shoppingCart.addItem("item2", 5);
        String result = shoppingCart.checkout();
        Assert.assertEquals("2 orders placed", result);
    }
}

D:\example-projects\spring-core-testing\spring-core-testing-with-junit-4\spring-testing-getting-started>mvn test
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] 
[INFO] --------< com.logicbig.example:spring-testing-getting-started >---------
[INFO] Building spring-testing-getting-started 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO]   from pom.xml
[INFO] --------------------------------[ jar ]---------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:resources (default-resources) @ spring-testing-getting-started ---
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-core-testing\spring-core-testing-with-junit-4\spring-testing-getting-started\src\main\resources
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- compiler:3.14.1:compile (default-compile) @ spring-testing-getting-started ---
[INFO] Recompiling the module because of added or removed source files.
[INFO] Compiling 4 source files with javac [debug target 25] to target\classes
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:testResources (default-testResources) @ spring-testing-getting-started ---
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-core-testing\spring-core-testing-with-junit-4\spring-testing-getting-started\src\test\resources
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- compiler:3.14.1:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ spring-testing-getting-started ---
[INFO] Recompiling the module because of changed dependency.
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file with javac [debug target 25] to target\test-classes
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- surefire:3.2.5:test (default-test) @ spring-testing-getting-started ---
[INFO] Using auto detected provider org.apache.maven.surefire.junit4.JUnit4Provider
[WARNING] file.encoding cannot be set as system property, use <argLine>-Dfile.encoding=...</argLine> instead
[INFO] 
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]  T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running com.logicbig.example.ShoppingCartTest
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.342 s -- in com.logicbig.example.ShoppingCartTest
[INFO] 
[INFO] Results:
[INFO] 
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
[INFO] 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  2.059 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2026-02-02T22:04:53+08:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is @ContextConfiguration?

This class-level annotation is used to specify what application configuration to load for Spring context. In above example, we specified 'classes' element with the value of our JavaConfig class

What is @RunWith annotation?

If a JUnit class or its parent class is annotated with @RunWith, JUnit framework invokes the specified class as a test runner instead of running the default runner.
See the tutorial on @RunWith

SpringJUnit4ClassRunner vs SpringRunner

Both runners are exactly the same .
SpringRunner was introduce just as a short name.

SpringRunner is a subclass of SpringJUnit4ClassRunner and it does nothing special but just provide a short name to be used with @RunWith.

public final class SpringRunner extends SpringJUnit4ClassRunner {
    public SpringRunner(Class<?> clazz) throws InitializationError {
        super(clazz);
    }
}

SpringRunner was introduced in Spring 4.3.0

In this example we used SpringRunner. Checkout this example of SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.

Example Project

Dependencies and Technologies Used:

• spring-context 6.2.13 (Spring Context)
  
• spring-test 6.2.13 (Spring TestContext Framework)
  
• junit 4.13.2 (JUnit is a unit testing framework for Java, created by Erich Gamma and Kent Beck)
  
• JDK 25
• Maven 3.9.11