junit testing - assertEquals for exception

Question

How can I use assertEquals to see if the exception message is correct? The test passes but I don\'t know if it hits the correct error or not.

The test I am running.

Answer 1

Java 8 solution

Here is a utility function that I wrote:

public final  T expectException( Class exceptionClass, Runnable runnable )
{
    try
    {
        runnable.run();
    }
    catch( Throwable throwable )
    {
        if( throwable instanceof AssertionError && throwable.getCause() != null )
            throwable = throwable.getCause(); //allows "assert x != null : new IllegalArgumentException();"
        assert exceptionClass.isInstance( throwable ) : throwable; //exception of the wrong kind was thrown.
        assert throwable.getClass() == exceptionClass : throwable; //exception thrown was a subclass, but not the exact class, expected.
        @SuppressWarnings( "unchecked" )
        T result = (T)throwable;
        return result;
    }
    assert false; //expected exception was not thrown.
    return null; //to keep the compiler happy.
}

(taken from my blog)

Use it as follows:

@Test
public void testThrows()
{
    RuntimeException e = expectException( RuntimeException.class, () -> 
        {
            throw new RuntimeException( "fail!" );
        } );
    assert e.getMessage().equals( "fail!" );
}

Also, if you would like to read some reasons why you should not want to assertTrue that the message of your exception is equal to a particular value, see this: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/278958/41811