End to end integration test for multiple spring boot applications under Maven

Question

What is the recommended way of running an end to end integration test for multiple Spring boot applications in the Maven build\'s verify phase?

Answer 1

Just to follow-up and say what I ended up doing (which is continuing to work well):

• I created the following Maven profiles in my testing module: "default" to skip tests by default (we use jgitflow plugin so only want end-to-end tests run when explicitly requested), "standalone-e2e" for end-to-end tests not requiring external resources such as databases (aimed at developers wanting to do a full end-to-end test), and "integrated-e2e" for end-to-end tests using real databases etc (which can get triggered as part of CI). Spring profiles (activated by the corresponding Maven profile) control the configuration of the individual components.
• For standalone-e2e, relevant plugins such as activemq-maven-plugin, hsqldb-maven-plugin etc. launch (and later shut down) resources as part of the end-to-end test, running on ports reserved with build-helper-maven-plugin. The process-exec-maven-plugin is used to launch all the components to be tested in the pre-integration-test phase (as standard Spring Boot apps), and it automatically takes care of shutting them down in the post-integration-test phase. Spring configuration and specific Maven test dependencies take care of other resources such as a fake FTP server. After all resources and components are running, the test code itself then populates the database and file system as required and triggers flows (and waits for corresponding replies etc) using JMS.
• The integrated-e2e profile is almost identical but uses "real" external resources (in our case, Amazon SQS queues, MySQL database, etc) configured in the associated Spring properties.
• All files needed for and generated by the tests (e.g. data files, HSQLDB files, log files, etc) are created under the "target" build directory, so it's easy to inspect this area to see what happened during the test, and also allow "mvn clean" to clear out everything.

I hope that's useful - it was certainly refreshing to find that whatever I needed to do, a Maven plugin existed to take care of it!