Writing Independent Tests

A lot of code uses environment variables, and we shouldn’t stop using environment variables just to make testing easier. So how can we test code that uses environment variables? One way could be to create a class with a method to get environment variables and then mock that method to return values that we want. Another way of testing code that uses environment variables is to use a config file. For example in src/main/resources you can put a file called application.conf with the following contents

Then for testing purposes you can put another file called application.conf in src/test/resources with the following contents

One example of a test which is dependent upon an internet connection is a test of code that tries to create a connection to a database. Such code could be tested using an in-memory database such as H2.

I hope that you have learned something useful. Feel free to leave a comment with feedback or your own experiences with testing.

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