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

Just make a Matcher that can be turned off and on, like this:

public class ExceptionMatcher extends BaseMatcher {
    private boolean active = true;
    private Class throwable;

    public ExceptionMatcher(Class throwable) {
        this.throwable = throwable;
    }

    public void on() {
        this.active = true;
    }

    public void off() {
        this.active = false;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean matches(Object object) {
        return active && throwable.isAssignableFrom(object.getClass());
    }

    @Override
    public void describeTo(Description description) {
        description.appendText("not the covered exception type");
    }
}

To use it:

add public ExpectedException exception = ExpectedException.none();, then:

ExceptionMatcher exMatch = new ExceptionMatcher(MyException.class);
exception.expect(exMatch);
someObject.somethingThatThrowsMyException();
exMatch.off();