Run Java Spring application from eclipse

Question

I'm working on a project at work that runs on the spring framework and requires a connection to an oracle database at all times. When I want to test a new method I have to stop my server, rebuild, start the server, then launch my application.

My question is is there any way to run my application without having to launch it every time? I'm okay with having to restart the server but I'm trying to eliminate launching the application every time.

Cheers.

Answer 1

What you seek are integration tests. You need to break your application into individual pieces and test their functionality against the oracle database bit by bit. These little pieces can be tested by certain testing technologies such as the popular JUnit.

All the pieces that you need should only depend on the data source and whatever other collaborating beans that are needed. Break your bean definitions apart such that they are small and only depend on very few beans, tracking back to the data source bean. You can then use JUnit (or whatever testing technology you'd like) and Spring's testing annotations to make small application contexts

See this section of the Spring reference manual for more information:

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/testing.html

When you have tests, you don't actually run the application - you run a part of it to verify its behavior individually. You can then add tests that test the pieces together, and eventually your confidence in the application will rise.