Most testers prefer Java for its platform independence and ease of use for building anything — from simple applications to complex mobile applications, websites, and so on.

In this article, we’ll share some of the most useful and best Java testing frameworks you can learn in 2021 to advance your career and improve your testing skills.

Survey statistics

According to the February 2021 TIOBE Popularity Index, Java is the second most popular programming language in the world, with an overall share of 11.29%.

In another survey by Statista in 2020, Java ranked among the top five most widely used programming languages globally, with nearly 40.2% of respondents saying they had successfully used Java.

Java test framework?

A Java framework can be called the body of predefined code that Java uses to create custom applications. Software testers or engineers have the flexibility to use these capabilities to their advantage. Frameworks allow consumers to add code to a large amount of pre-written code. The Java framework helps test developers focus on the core logic of a business application without writing code for basic functions such as database connections, exception handling methods, and so on.

Advantages of the Java test framework

  • Efficiency: Often, an application development effort that takes a lot of time to complete can be easily solved using a Java framework because its pre-written tasks make the job easier.
  • Security: The framework provides best-in-class security for applications and helps ease security issues quickly.
  • Support: The framework provides extensive community support, and you can ease all problems and concerns in a short time.
  • Cost: When we talk about cost, we should take comfort in the fact that the Java framework is relatively inexpensive to maintain. Thanks to the use of a test automation framework, development costs are greatly reduced.

The nine best Java Testing Frameworks for 2021

There are numerous Java test frameworks available to QA testers. Understandably, the more options you have, the more complex it is to choose the best option from a batch. Let’s take a quick look at the nine best Java test frameworks:

JUnit

JUnit is one of the most popular Java unit testing frameworks. Unit tests are used to test functions or small pieces of code. It plays a crucial role in test-driven development and is part of a collective unit testing framework called xUnit. JUnit promotes the idea of testing first, not coding, with the emphasis on setting test data for parts of the code that should be tested before execution. This technique is similar to testing a little bit, coding a little bit. It improves programmer productivity and program code stability, thus reducing programmer stress and minimizing debugging time.

JUnit 5.0 adds a lot of functionality and convenience to unit testing. Comments simplify the process of writing unit tests that check for exceptions. Expert developers who follow a test-driven approach should first write and run unit tests before writing more code. After you write the code, you must execute the entire test and check for appropriate results.

  • JUnit 5 and Selenium Basics (part 1)
  • JUnit 5 and Selenium Basics (part 2)
  • JUnit 5 and Selenium Basics (part 3)

Core features of JUnit

  • It providesTestRunnerTo perform tests.
  • Write enhanced tests faster.
  • Comments to simplify writing and maintaining tests.
  • Provide assertions to test the expected results.
  • It’s not too complicated and has the shortest execution time.
  • A test suite can contain test cases as well as other test suites.

Is JUnit the ideal Java testing framework?

While it is the original way to test Java-based projects, it provides several advantages for teams:

  • Early error finder: Compared to other test automation frameworks, this framework can easily locate errors early on. When an error is found, it is specified in a separate section until it is mitigated. This helps drive the focus on debugging.
  • Open source: JUnit is a free open source testing framework. As a result, a vibrant community has been built around the framework.
  • Better suited for TDD: QA engineers prefer test driven development (TDD) in order to catch errors early. The developer performs the tests and resolves problems before moving on to a software test build. The framework uses assertions in tests, and the code throws them when it encounters a failure. JUnit test framework is very useful for test-driven development.

JBehave

JBehave is also one of the best Java testing frameworks, primarily used with Selenium WebDriver for Java testing. The JBehave framework is a BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) framework created in 2003. The ultimate goal behind JBehave is to help newbies understand and learn behaviour-driven Development faster.

Core functionality of JBehave

  • Pure Java execution, suitable for java-based enterprises or when interacting with any environment that exposes Java apis.
  • Can be executed simultaneously, indicating the number of concurrent threads.
  • Since the user stories are written in Gherkin or JBehave syntax, the learning curve is comfortable.
  • Step class specification and annotation-based configuration.
  • For writing configuration and step instancesGroovyThe script.
  • Dependency injection supports configuration and phase instances composed of favorite containers (PicoContainer, Needle, Guice, Spring, Weld).
  • Extensible story reporting: Outputs stories executed in a variety of human readable file-based formats (TXT, HTML, XML). Fully stylized view.
  • Ant integration: Allows stories to run through Ant tasks.
  • Maven integration: Allows stories to be executed through Maven plug-ins during specified build phases.

Is JBehave the ideal Java unit testing framework?

In addition to project managers, the framework helps increase transparency between the test team and the rest of the enterprise. In addition, it provides the following advantages to the team.

  • Semi-formal languages: This particular framework uses semi-formal languages, which are of great help to software developers. The presence of domain vocabulary features helps manage consistency in QA team structures.
  • Good specification: The product has better specification because this form of Java testing framework is descriptive and intuitive.
  • BDD Development Concept: JBehave is an ideal framework for automating BDD in Java. After seeking input from various stakeholders, such as engineers, product managers, etc., you can leverage its capabilities to generate effective tests.

Serenity

Serenity is an open source library designed entirely for BDD (behavior driven development). It extends the WebDriver and JUnit properties. It is also one of the most popular test automation frameworks that allows you to write well-structured tests. Serenity can also be integrated with existing BDD frameworks such as JBehave.

In addition to forming meaningful details for each test, the tool also shows the characteristics that are tested in each test case. One of the best things about Serenity is that it supports many automated acceptance testing solutions.

Testers can use this framework in combination with JUnit to quickly write maintainable tests, or with Selenium WebDriver to test Web applications in Selenium. Serenity also supports RestAssured to test the REST API. The framework also allows you to use any BDD (behavior driven Development) tool, such as Cucumber. It can be used in conjunction with popular test management tools such as JIRA.

The core features of Serenity

  • Helps you write cleaner, maintainable automation and regression tests.
  • Get a business-readable report for each test.
  • It can be used to automate Web tests using Selenium.
  • It can be integrated with other popular BDD tools such as JBehave, Cucumber, and test automation frameworks such as JUnit.
  • Can be integrated with essentials stored in external sources such as JIRA or other test case management tools.

Is Serenity an ideal Java testing framework?

Serenity is known for its advanced integration capabilities with popular BDD tools, test automation frameworks, and project management tools. In addition, it provides the following advantages to the team:

  • Informative Reporting: This tool is primarily used to report acceptance criteria. However, compared to other BDD frameworks such as JBehave, reports captured using Serenity are very informative.
  • Higher quality Test scenarios: Serenity helps developers write high-quality automated test case scenarios. It also provides support for Selenium WebDriver and RestAssured, enabling QA engineers to easily write automation-based acceptance tests.

Selenium

Selenium is an automated, open source (free) application testing framework for cross-browser testing. Selenium is a powerful framework for programmatically controlling and managing a Web browser. It works on almost all browsers, works on most popular operating systems, and its scripts can be written in popular programming languages such as C#, Java, Python, PHP, and so on.

The Selenium framework reduces the amount of work involved in code maintenance.

In general, Selenium creates three frameworks for the automation of manual test cases: keyword driven testing, data driven testing, and mixed testing.

Core features of Selenium

  • The Selenium Integrated Development Environment provides record and playback features for writing tests and creating Selenium scripts for future reference.
  • Selenium supports a variety of programming languages, operating systems, and browsers:
  • Operating system: iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Solaris, Linux
  • Browsers: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
  • Programming language: Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc.
  • Support parallel test execution to improve efficiency and reduce test execution time.
  • It can be integrated with Ant, Maven, and other frameworks.

Recent Selenium 4 news

  • Selenium4 Frontline Dispatches
  • Selenium4 Alpha-7 Upgrade experience
  • After Selenium 4, no longer meet the API

Is Selenium an ideal Java testing framework?

It is a powerful framework for controlling Web browsers through test automation code. Here’s what makes Selenium one of the most powerful testing frameworks:

  • Reusability and integration: Cloud-based Selenium GIRd automation enables running Selenium tests on a large scale. Selenium integrates seamlessly with popular test automation frameworks such as JUnit, TestNG, and so on.
  • Large community support: The Selenium framework is open source and strongly supported by the online community.
  • Language and framework support: support for major programming languages such as C#, Java, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, etc.

testNG

TestNG is a Java-based open source testing framework. The framework is inspired by JUnit and NUnit. We can also create HTML reports during test implementation.

It has features such as grouping tests, annotations, parameterization, and so on to help you create tests faster. These useful feature sets make TestNG a more powerful framework than other test automation frameworks.

Core features of TestNG

  • Multiple post/pre-comments are provided to support different Settings and cleanup options
  • Allows users to perform data-driven tests
  • Test suites in this framework are primarily configured using XML files, namely testng.xml
  • Support for testing integration classes
  • Provides flexible plug-in apis and flexible runtime configuration
  • Support for dependency test methods, load tests, parallel tests, and partial failures
  • Support multi-threaded testing

Is TestNG the ideal Java testing framework?

The testing framework comes with a system approach and new features that simplify testing tasks. Here’s what makes it one of the best testing frameworks:

  • Annotation, grouping, and parameterization: This particular feature already exists in the latest versions of JUnit. These capabilities are useful in complex projects where you may need to run a large number of test cases. In such cases, it is better to spend more time deploying the framework than to rely entirely on another framework, such as JUnit.
  • Powerful additions: TestNG covers functional testing, unit testing, integration, and E2E (end-to-end) testing. It has a number of class interfaces and techniques that can ease the QA engineer’s task.

Mockito

Mockito is an open source and one of the preferred Java unit testing frameworks. This well-known Java-based simulation framework is primarily used for Java application unit testing. The main benefit of using Mockito is that you do not need to create mock objects because the framework generates them automatically. It creates the simulation through comments.

Mockito is used to write behavior-based development tests using syntax sugar (that is, a programming language whose syntax is useful for accessibility).

Internally, this uses the Java Reflection API to create mock objects for the exact interface. The main goal of using the Mockito Java test framework is to simplify test development by simulating external dependencies and leveraging them in test implementation. As a result, it provides a test code that is simple to understand and easy to modify. We can also use Mockito with other frameworks, such as TestNG and JUnit.

Core features of Mockito

  • Mock objects to reduce external dependencies.
  • use@MockTo easily create mock objects.
  • It provides validation of the order of method calls.
  • Security refactoring: Because mock objects are formed at run time, renaming methods or interfaces does not affect test code.

Is Mockito the ideal Java testing framework?

Mocks are a basic technique for modern unit testing. The framework enables developers to distinguish themselves from different simulation or testing frameworks by enabling them to validate the behavior of suTs (the system under test) without setting expectations. Here are the benefits it provides to QA teams:

  • Create proof of Concept or Demonstration: Simulations are cost-effective and ideal for creating A POC (proof of Concept)
  • Create tests in advanced TDD: This enables you to add tests to the automated environment during development. Service Mocking allows you to exploit the capabilities provided by TDD
  • Best Void method handling: It handles Void methods better than other simulation frameworks such as EasyMock
  • Class (not just interface) emulation: This framework enables you to emulate classes and interfaces

HTTPUnit

HTTPUnit is an open source functional testing framework based on JUnit that mimics browser behaviors such as page redirection, form submission, cookie management, and JS authentication.

HttpUnit is also used to test websites without the need for a Web browser. The framework also supports automatic page redirection, HTTP basic access authentication, HTML form submission, JavaScript, and cookies.

This allows Java test code to work with recovered pages, such as the XML document Object Model (DOM), text, or containers for tables, forms, links, and so on. This Java test framework can be integrated with JUnit to easily write tests.

It provides an API to interact with HTTP and HTML servers.

Core features of HTTPUnit

  • Used to test websites without any web browsers.
  • Supports cookie management.
  • Support for HTTPS and HTTP protocols, as well as support for HTML responses.
  • It supports testing of Web applications, so it also facilitates regression testing.
  • HTTPUnit is faster than other frameworks, such as Selenium, because you don’t need a Web browser for testing.
  • Better JavaScript support can mimic the actions of the configured browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox).
  • Proxy server support and excellent JavaScript support.

Is HTTPUnit the ideal Java testing framework?

HTTPUnit is a great framework for performing automated acceptance tests or functional tests.

  • Ease of use: HttpUnit mimics relevant parts of browser behavior, including JavaScript, form submission, cookies, and automatic page redirection.

Gauge

Gauge is a behavior-driven Java testing framework from ThoughtWorks.Inc. It is also one of the best Java testing frameworks available, allowing software engineers to develop automated frameworks and speed up the software development process.

This Java open source framework reduces the pressure of acceptance testing with minimal code involvement. Like Selenium, this Java framework can be used with popular languages such as C#, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, and Python.

Gauge’s core features

  • A wide range of templates can be accessed using the language of choice.
  • Command line support simplifies integration with popular CI/CD tools.
  • Create custom plug-ins easily using the open source Gauge API.
  • Use event fault screenshots to quickly identify exceptions.
  • The ability to generate scalable tests through parallel execution and provide integration with cloud-based solutions to achieve the goal of rapid cross-browser testing.

Is Gauge the ideal Java testing framework?

The framework continues to have a significant impact by offering agile teams plenty of rewards throughout the DevOps process. Here’s what makes it an ideal testing framework:

  • The best framework for cross-browser testing: This framework has revolutionized automated test programming, making it easy for even non-technical people to write automated test frameworks.
  • Parallel test execution: The Gauge framework allows you to parallelize tests, allowing you to run them quickly.

Geb

Geb combines the elegance of jQuery’s content selection with the functionality provided by WebDriver, page Object modeling (POM), and the clarity provided by the Groovy language. Geb is open source and licensed under the Apache License (version 2.0).

Gauge can be used to easily perform cross-browser tests using Selenium WebDriver. The framework can be used for general automation, network scraping, and acceptance (and functional) testing along with other frameworks such as eg-JVM, TestNG, JUnit, and Spock.

Core functionality of Geb

  • It can perform tests at a much faster rate.
  • Compatible with Firefox, Chrome, IE, HTMLUnit and other browsers.
  • Great for running regression tests.
  • When using Geb for automated testing, if there are any UI changes in the application (or web site), you need to make minimal changes to the test code. This minimizes code duplication.

Is Geb the ideal Java testing framework?

Geb can be integrated with popular test automation frameworks such as TestNG, Cucumber, Spock, and JUnit. It supports the page Object model design pattern (by default).

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