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

Junit4 solution with Java8 is to use this function:

public Throwable assertThrows(Class expectedException, java.util.concurrent.Callable funky) {
    try {
        funky.call();
    } catch (Throwable e) {
        if (expectedException.isInstance(e)) {
            return e;
        }
        throw new AssertionError(
                String.format("Expected [%s] to be thrown, but was [%s]", expectedException, e));
    }
    throw new AssertionError(
            String.format("Expected [%s] to be thrown, but nothing was thrown.", expectedException));
}

Usage is then:

    assertThrows(ValidationException.class,
            () -> finalObject.checkSomething(null));

Note that the only limitation is to use a final object reference in lambda expression. This solution allows to continue test assertions instead of expecting thowable at method level using @Test(expected = IndexOutOfBoundsException.class) solution.