request scoped beans in spring testing

Question

I would like to make use of request scoped beans in my app. I use JUnit4 for testing. If I try to create one in a test like this:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = { "classpath:spring/TestScopedBeans-context.xml" })
public class TestScopedBeans {
    protected final static Logger logger = Logger
            .getLogger(TestScopedBeans.class);

    @Resource
    private Object tObj;

    @Test
    public void testBean() {
        logger.debug(tObj);
    }

    @Test
    public void testBean2() {
        logger.debug(tObj);
    }

With the following bean definition:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">
  <bean class="java.lang.Object" id="tObj" scope="request" />
 </beans>           

And I get:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'gov.nasa.arc.cx.sor.query.TestScopedBeans': Injection of resource fields failed; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: No Scope registered for scope 'request'
<...SNIP...>
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: No Scope registered for scope 'request'

So I found this blog that seemed helpful: http://www.javathinking.com/2009/06/no-scope-registered-for-scope-request_5.html

But I noticed he uses AbstractDependencyInjectionSpringContextTests which seems to be deprecated in Spring 3.0. I use Spring 2.5 at this time, but thought it shouldn't be too hard to switch this method to use AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests as the docs suggest (ok the docs link to the 3.8 version but I'm using 4.4). So I change the test to extend AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests... same message. Same problem. And now the prepareTestInstance() method I want to override is not defined. OK, maybe I'll put those registerScope calls somewhere else... So I read more about TestExecutionListeners and think that would be better since I don't want to have to inherit the spring package structure. So I changed my Test to:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = { "classpath:spring/TestScopedBeans-context.xml" })
@TestExecutionListeners({})
public class TestScopedBeans {

expecting I would have to create a custom listener but I when I ran it. It works! Great, but why? I don't see where any of the stock listeners are registering request scope or session scope, and why would they? there's nothing to say I want that yet, this might not be a Test for Spring MVC code...

Answer 1

Solution for Spring 3.2 or newer

Spring starting with version 3.2 provides support for session/request scoped beans for integration testing.

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestConfig.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
public class SampleTest {

    @Autowired WebApplicationContext wac;

    @Autowired MockHttpServletRequest request;

    @Autowired MockHttpSession session;    

    @Autowired MySessionBean mySessionBean;

    @Autowired MyRequestBean myRequestBean;

    @Test
    public void requestScope() throws Exception {
        assertThat(myRequestBean)
           .isSameAs(request.getAttribute("myRequestBean"));
        assertThat(myRequestBean)
           .isSameAs(wac.getBean("myRequestBean", MyRequestBean.class));
    }

    @Test
    public void sessionScope() throws Exception {
        assertThat(mySessionBean)
           .isSameAs(session.getAttribute("mySessionBean"));
        assertThat(mySessionBean)
           .isSameAs(wac.getBean("mySessionBean", MySessionBean.class));
    }
}

Read more: Request and Session Scoped Beans

---

Solution for Spring before 3.2 with listener

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestConfig.class)
@TestExecutionListeners({WebContextTestExecutionListener.class,
        DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.class,
        DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener.class})
public class SampleTest {
    ...
}

WebContextTestExecutionListener.java

public  class WebContextTestExecutionListener extends AbstractTestExecutionListener {
    @Override
    public void prepareTestInstance(TestContext testContext) {
        if (testContext.getApplicationContext() instanceof GenericApplicationContext) {
            GenericApplicationContext context = (GenericApplicationContext) testContext.getApplicationContext();
            ConfigurableListableBeanFactory beanFactory = context.getBeanFactory();
            beanFactory.registerScope(WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_REQUEST,
                    new SimpleThreadScope());
            beanFactory.registerScope(WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_SESSION,
                    new SimpleThreadScope());
        }
    }
}

---

Solution for Spring before 3.2 with custom scopes

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestConfig.class, locations = "test-config.xml")
public class SampleTest {

...

}

TestConfig.java

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(...)
public class TestConfig {

    @Bean
    public CustomScopeConfigurer customScopeConfigurer(){
        CustomScopeConfigurer scopeConfigurer = new CustomScopeConfigurer();

        HashMap<String, Object> scopes = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        scopes.put(WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_REQUEST,
                new SimpleThreadScope());
        scopes.put(WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_SESSION,
                new SimpleThreadScope());
        scopeConfigurer.setScopes(scopes);

        return scopeConfigurer

}

or with xml configuration

test-config.xml

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomScopeConfigurer">
    <property name="scopes">
        <map>
            <entry key="request">
                <bean class="org.springframework.context.support.SimpleThreadScope"/>
            </entry>
        </map>
        <map>
            <entry key="session">
                <bean class="org.springframework.context.support.SimpleThreadScope"/>
            </entry>
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>

Source code

Source code for all presented solutions:

• https://github.com/mariuszs/spring-test-web