How to do a JUnit assert on a message in a logger

Question

I have some code-under-test that calls on a Java logger to report its status. In the JUnit test code, I would like to verify that the correct log entry was made in this logger. Something along the following lines:

methodUnderTest(bool x){
    if(x)
        logger.info("x happened")
}

@Test tester(){
    // perhaps setup a logger first.
    methodUnderTest(true);
    assertXXXXXX(loggedLevel(),Level.INFO);
}

I suppose that this could be done with a specially adapted logger (or handler, or formatter), but I would prefer to re-use a solution that already exists. (And, to be honest, it is not clear to me how to get at the logRecord from a logger, but suppose that that's possible.)

Answer 1

For log4j2 the solution is slightly different because AppenderSkeleton is not available anymore. Additionally, using Mockito, or similar library to create an Appender with an ArgumentCaptor will not work if you're expecting multiple logging messages because the MutableLogEvent is reused over multiple log messages. The best solution I found for log4j2 is:

private static MockedAppender mockedAppender;
private static Logger logger;

@Before
public void setup() {
    mockedAppender.message.clear();
}

/**
 * For some reason mvn test will not work if this is @Before, but in eclipse it works! As a
 * result, we use @BeforeClass.
 */
@BeforeClass
public static void setupClass() {
    mockedAppender = new MockedAppender();
    logger = (Logger)LogManager.getLogger(MatchingMetricsLogger.class);
    logger.addAppender(mockedAppender);
    logger.setLevel(Level.INFO);
}

@AfterClass
public static void teardown() {
    logger.removeAppender(mockedAppender);
}

@Test
public void test() {
    // do something that causes logs
    for (String e : mockedAppender.message) {
        // add asserts for the log messages
    }
}

private static class MockedAppender extends AbstractAppender {

    List<String> message = new ArrayList<>();

    protected MockedAppender() {
        super("MockedAppender", null, null);
    }

    @Override
    public void append(LogEvent event) {
        message.add(event.getMessage().getFormattedMessage());
    }
}

Answer 2

I've needed this several times as well. I've put together a small sample below, which you'd want to adjust to your needs. Basically, you create your own Appender and add it to the logger you want. If you'd want to collect everything, the root logger is a good place to start, but you can use a more specific if you'd like. Don't forget to remove the Appender when you're done, otherwise you might create a memory leak. Below I've done it within the test, but setUp or @Before and tearDown or @After might be better places, depending on your needs.

Also, the implementation below collects everything in a List in memory. If you're logging a lot you might consider adding a filter to drop boring entries, or to write the log to a temporary file on disk (Hint: LoggingEvent is Serializable, so you should be able to just serialize the event objects, if your log message is.)

import org.apache.log4j.AppenderSkeleton;
import org.apache.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
import org.junit.Test;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.is;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;

public class MyTest {
    @Test
    public void test() {
        final TestAppender appender = new TestAppender();
        final Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();
        logger.addAppender(appender);
        try {
            Logger.getLogger(MyTest.class).info("Test");
        }
        finally {
            logger.removeAppender(appender);
        }

        final List<LoggingEvent> log = appender.getLog();
        final LoggingEvent firstLogEntry = log.get(0);
        assertThat(firstLogEntry.getLevel(), is(Level.INFO));
        assertThat((String) firstLogEntry.getMessage(), is("Test"));
        assertThat(firstLogEntry.getLoggerName(), is("MyTest"));
    }
}

class TestAppender extends AppenderSkeleton {
    private final List<LoggingEvent> log = new ArrayList<LoggingEvent>();

    @Override
    public boolean requiresLayout() {
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    protected void append(final LoggingEvent loggingEvent) {
        log.add(loggingEvent);
    }

    @Override
    public void close() {
    }

    public List<LoggingEvent> getLog() {
        return new ArrayList<LoggingEvent>(log);
    }
}

Answer 3

Another option is to mock Appender and verify if message was logged to this appender. Example for Log4j 1.2.x and mockito:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.mock;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.verify;

import org.apache.log4j.Appender;
import org.apache.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.mockito.ArgumentCaptor;

public class MyTest {

    private final Appender appender = mock(Appender.class);
    private final Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();

    @Before
    public void setup() {
        logger.addAppender(appender);
    }

    @Test
    public void test() {
        // when
        Logger.getLogger(MyTest.class).info("Test");

        // then
        ArgumentCaptor<LoggingEvent> argument = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(LoggingEvent.class);
        verify(appender).doAppend(argument.capture());
        assertEquals(Level.INFO, argument.getValue().getLevel());
        assertEquals("Test", argument.getValue().getMessage());
        assertEquals("MyTest", argument.getValue().getLoggerName());
    }

    @After
    public void cleanup() {
        logger.removeAppender(appender);
    }
}

Answer 4

Here is what i did for logback.

I created a TestAppender class:

public class TestAppender extends AppenderBase<ILoggingEvent> {

    private Stack<ILoggingEvent> events = new Stack<ILoggingEvent>();

    @Override
    protected void append(ILoggingEvent event) {
        events.add(event);
    }

    public void clear() {
        events.clear();
    }

    public ILoggingEvent getLastEvent() {
        return events.pop();
    }
}

Then in the parent of my testng unit test class I created a method:

protected TestAppender testAppender;

@BeforeClass
public void setupLogsForTesting() {
    Logger root = (Logger)LoggerFactory.getLogger(Logger.ROOT_LOGGER_NAME);
    testAppender = (TestAppender)root.getAppender("TEST");
    if (testAppender != null) {
        testAppender.clear();
    }
}

I have a logback-test.xml file defined in src/test/resources and I added a test appender:

<appender name="TEST" class="com.intuit.icn.TestAppender">
    <encoder>
        <pattern>%m%n</pattern>
    </encoder>
</appender>

and added this appender to the root appender:

<root>
    <level value="error" />
    <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
    <appender-ref ref="TEST" />
</root>

Now in my test classes that extend from my parent test class I can get the appender and get the last message logged and verify the message, the level, the throwable.

ILoggingEvent lastEvent = testAppender.getLastEvent();
assertEquals(lastEvent.getMessage(), "...");
assertEquals(lastEvent.getLevel(), Level.WARN);
assertEquals(lastEvent.getThrowableProxy().getMessage(), "...");

Answer 5

Using Jmockit (1.21) I was able to write this simple test. The test makes sure a specific ERROR message is called just once.

@Test
public void testErrorMessage() {
    final org.slf4j.Logger logger = org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger( MyConfig.class );

    new Expectations(logger) {{
        //make sure this error is happens just once.
        logger.error( "Something went wrong..." );
        times = 1;
    }};

    new MyTestObject().runSomethingWrong( "aaa" ); //SUT that eventually cause the error in the log.    
}

Answer 6

There are two things that you might be trying to test.

• When there is an event of interest to the operator of my program, does my program perform an appropriate logging operation, which can inform the operator of that event.
• When my program performs a logging operation, does the log message it produces have the correct text.

Those two things are actually different things, and so could be tested separately. However, testing the second (the text of messages) is so problematic, I recommend against doing it at all. A test of a message text will ultimately consist of checking that one text string (the expected message text) is the same as, or can be trivially derived from, the text string used in your logging code.

• Those tests do not test program logic at all, they only test that one resource (a string) is equivalent to another resource.
• The tests are fragile; even a minor tweak to the formatting of a log message breaks your tests.
• The tests are incompatible with internationalisation (translation) of your logging interface.The tests assume there is only one possible message text, and thus only one possible human language.

Note that having your program code (implementing some business logic, perhaps) directly calling the text logging interface is poor design (but unfortunately very commom). Code that is responsible for business logic is also deciding some logging policy and the text of log messages. It mixes business logic with user interface code (yes, log messages are part of your program's user interface). Those things should be separate.

I therefore recommend that business logic does not directly generate the text of log messages. Instead have it delegate to a logging object.

• The class of the logging object should provide a suitable internal API, which your business object can use to express the event that has occurred using objects of your domain model, not text strings.
• The implementation of your logging class is responsible for producing text representations of those domain objects, and rendering a suitable text description of the event, then forwarding that text message to the low level logging framework (such as JUL, log4j or slf4j).
• Your business logic is responsible only for calling the correct methods of the internal API of your logger class, passing the correct domain objects, to describe the actual events that occurred.
• Your concrete logging class implements an interface, which describes the internal API your business logic may use.
• Your class(es) that implements business logic and must perform logging has a reference to the logging object to delegate to. The class of the reference is the abstract interface.
• Use dependency injection to set up the reference to the logger.

You can then test that your business logic classes correctly tell the logging interface about events, by creating a mock logger, which implements the internal logging API, and using dependency injection in the set up phase of your test.

Like this:

 public class MyService {// The class we want to test
    private final MyLogger logger;

    public MyService(MyLogger logger) {
       this.logger = Objects.requireNonNull(logger);
    }

    public void performTwiddleOperation(Foo foo) {// The method we want to test
       ...// The business logic
       logger.performedTwiddleOperation(foo);
    }
 };

 public interface MyLogger {
    public void performedTwiddleOperation(Foo foo);
    ...
 };

 public final class MySl4jLogger: implements MyLogger {
    ...

    @Override
    public void performedTwiddleOperation(Foo foo) {
       logger.info("twiddled foo " + foo.getId());
    }
 }

 public final void MyProgram {
    public static void main(String[] argv) {
       ...
       MyLogger logger = new MySl4jLogger(...);
       MyService service = new MyService(logger);
       startService(service);// or whatever you must do
       ...
    }
 }

 public class MyServiceTest {
    ...

    static final class MyMockLogger: implements MyLogger {
       private Food.id id;
       private int nCallsPerformedTwiddleOperation;
       ...

       @Override
       public void performedTwiddleOperation(Foo foo) {
          id = foo.id;
          ++nCallsPerformedTwiddleOperation;
       }

       void assertCalledPerformedTwiddleOperation(Foo.id id) {
          assertEquals("Called performedTwiddleOperation", 1, nCallsPerformedTwiddleOperation);
          assertEquals("Called performedTwiddleOperation with correct ID", id, this.id);
       }
    };

    @Test
    public void testPerformTwiddleOperation_1() {
       // Setup
       MyMockLogger logger = new MyMockLogger();
       MyService service = new MyService(logger);
       Foo.Id id = new Foo.Id(...);
       Foo foo = new Foo(id, 1);

       // Execute
       service.performedTwiddleOperation(foo);

       // Verify
       ...
       logger.assertCalledPerformedTwiddleOperation(id);
    }
 }