Trying to run retries on before() Method before failing a test

Question

I have an unstable ENV which im running JUnit tests on.

Many tests fails on before() method because connection/network/non test related issues and I want to add a feature that retries a before method - before failing the test completely.

I've added the code snippet but im not sure this is the best way/practice to do so...

//hold the max number of before attempts
final private int retries = 3;
//will count number of retries accrued
private int retrieCounter = 0 ;

@Before
public void before() {
    try {
        //doing stuff that may fail due to network / other issues that are not relevant to the test
        setup = new Setup(commonSetup);
        server = setup.getServer();
        agents = setup.getAgents();
        api = server.getApi();
        setup.reset();
    }
    //if before fails in any reason
    catch (Exception e){
        //update the retire counter
        retrieCounter++;
        //if we max out the number of retries exit with a runtime exception
        if (retrieCounter > retries)
            throw new RuntimeException("not working and the test will stop!");
        //if not run the before again
        else this.before();
    }

}

Answer 1

You can use a TestRule for this, please look at my answer to How to Re-run failed JUnit tests immediately? . This should do what you want. If you use the Retry rule defined in that answer, this will actually re-execute the before() if it throws an exception:

public class RetryTest {
  @Rule
  public Retry retry = new Retry(3);

  @Before
  public void before() {
    System.err.println("before");
  }

  @Test
  public void test1() {
  }

  @Test
  public void test2() {
      Object o = null;
      o.equals("foo");
  }
}

This produces:

before
test2(junit_test.RetryTest): run 1 failed
before
test2(junit_test.RetryTest): run 2 failed
before
test2(junit_test.RetryTest): run 3 failed
test2(junit_test.RetryTest): giving up after 3 failures
before