How do you assert that a certain exception is thrown in JUnit 4 tests?

Question

How can I use JUnit4 idiomatically to test that some code throws an exception?

While I can certainly do something like this:

@Test
public void testFo         


        

Answer 1

Java 8 solution

If you would like a solution which:

• Utilizes Java 8 lambdas
• Does not depend on any JUnit magic
• Allows you to check for multiple exceptions within a single test method
• Checks for an exception being thrown by a specific set of lines within your test method instead of any unknown line in the entire test method
• Yields the actual exception object that was thrown so that you can further examine it

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!" );
}