This is some example code of how you can create system tests to test a REST service.

The purpose of these system tests are to test a deployed system, or a dockerized system. This can be needed to check that you have configured and wired things correctly.

We drive the system tests with good old JUnit. There is not always need for a more abstract BDD framework.

We use the RestAssured framework which I like to use to test HTTP REST services.

To load configuration from a Yaml files, we use SnakeYaml which requires very little code to get a structured yml file into a Java object.

A "deployed system" is a system which is deployed to real machines, virtual or directly on metal, preferrably using the same provisioning as you do on your production environment.

A "dockerized system" is a system where all of the services in the system are started as Docker containers, usually using Docker Compose and often in the same machine.

When you are coding, you want to run the tests from IntelliJ. To make it work, you need to specify which config file the tests should use. Edit the run configuration of the ExampleTest and add -DconfigFile=./config/example-config.yml to VM Options.

You can also run the tests using Gradle command line: ./gradlew clean build -DconfigFile=config/example-config.yml

When you run the tests in a Continuous Delivery pipeline, you probably want to run them from a published artifact (a jar in this case). Here's an example of how to do that: java -DconfigFile="config/example-config.yml" -cp system-tests.jar org.junit.runner.JUnitCore se.bettercode.systemtest.suite.FirstTestSuite

max@max-x1:~/work/system-tests$ docker-compose -f docker-compose/docker-compose.yml up -d
Creating network "dockercompose_default" with the default driver
Creating myapp-database
Creating myapp-rabbit
Creating external-nasty-xml-stub
Creating myapp
max@max-x1:~/work/system-tests$ ./gradlew clean build -DconfigFile=config/dockerized-config.yml
Starting a Gradle Daemon, 1 incompatible and 1 stopped Daemons could not be reused, use --status for details

> Task :test 

se.bettercode.systemtest.suite.FirstTestSuite > se.bettercode.systemtest.ExampleTest.restEndpointIsOK PASSED

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 13s
4 actionable tasks: 4 executed
max@max-x1:~/work/system-tests$ docker-compose -f docker-compose/docker-compose.yml down
Stopping myapp ... done
Stopping myapp-rabbit ... done
Stopping external-nasty-xml-stub ... done
Stopping myapp-database ... done
Removing myapp ... done
Removing myapp-rabbit ... done
Removing external-nasty-xml-stub ... done
Removing myapp-database ... done
Removing network dockercompose_default
max@max-x1:~/work/system-tests$ 

./gradlew clean jar