Java Testng unit test: Spring is not able to create object before BeforeSuite or BeforeTest

Question

I have an unit test is working fine in it's current format. My unit test looks like:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.testng.AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests;
import org.testng.Assert;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeSuite;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;

@Test
@ContextConfiguration(locations = { "classpath:testContext.xml" })
public class DialPadMonitorTest extends AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests
{
    @Autowired
    DialPadMonitor service;


    @BeforeSuite
    public void doBeforeSuite() {       
        System.out.println("Initializing suit.........");
    }

    @BeforeTest
    public void doBeforeTest() {
        System.out.println("Initializing tests.........");
    }

    @Test()
    void testIfEasyToDial()
    {
        service.createDialAssociation();

        Assert.assertTrue(service.isNumberEasy(159658521));
        Assert.assertTrue(service.isNumberEasy(555555555));
        Assert.assertFalse(service.isNumberEasy(505555555));
        Assert.assertFalse(service.isNumberEasy(555555505));

        Assert.assertTrue(service.isNumberEasy(2547096));
        Assert.assertTrue(service.isNumberEasy(5547521));
        Assert.assertFalse(service.isNumberEasy(2806547));
        Assert.assertFalse(service.isNumberEasy(3558123));

    }

    @Test()
    void testIfAssociated()
    {
        service.createDialAssociation();

        Assert.assertTrue(service.isNoAssociated(3,3));
        Assert.assertTrue(service.isNoAssociated(3,6));
        Assert.assertFalse(service.isNoAssociated(3,9));

    }
}

Even though I am seeing the comments like

• System.out.println("Initializing suit.........");
• System.out.println("Initializing test.........");

Problem is that if I move service.createDialAssociation() into any of BeforeSuite or BeforeTest, I am getting null pointer exception.

Any insight on why am I getting the null pointer exception in that case and how to solve?

Answer 1

If you want to make sure Spring context was loaded fully, add a method anotated with @PostConstruct

The PostConstruct annotation is used on a method that needs to be executed after dependency injection is done to perform any initialization

Answer 2

You should use @BeforeMethod instead of @BeforeTest because context is initialized that way. You can see it in a Spring source file .

Answer 3

Adding

 @BeforeSuite(alwaysRun = true)
 @BeforeClass(alwaysRun = true)
 @Override
 protected void springTestContextPrepareTestInstance() throws Exception {
     super.springTestContextPrepareTestInstance();
 }

solves the issue. Note that this method springTestContextPrepareTestInstance should be executed before all @BeforeSuite methods. This can be achieved by placing it to a separate base class or by adding depenedsOn in others @BeforeSuite annotations.