Using Groovy in Testing

The bulk of the session introduced the Groovy language.

Benefits of using Groovy for writing developer tests were summarised as:

• test code shorter and sweeter (than Java)
• interactive shell
• JUnit 4 support including Theories
• TestNG support
• full Java library support
• built-in support for parsing XML
• JUnit 3.8 built-in
• powerful assertion capability built-in to Groovy (though for JUnit4 assertions, you need to use static imports)
• built-in mocking easy to use (with maps or expandos)
• Groovy's fun!!

To use as a JUnit test, the simplest way is to extend GroovyTestCase. With the Groovy plugins installed, you can use Groovy JUnits in the same way as Java JUnits.