Clean tests and Improve test redability to avoid problems between mocks - spring

Question

Imagine the situation where I have several integration tests that validate the successful processing of a Product, under different conditions.
This Product has Id, Name, and Description. The description only accepts clear text, but I want to start accepting some HTML elements as well - Needless to say that I am considering XSS attacks
To validate the HTML tags I'm using JSoup which allows me to define only the HTML tags I want to allow.
This will be an example of the code I will use to mock the product, bearing in mind that for each case I need a setDescription(description) with different values:
private Product buildProduct() {
Product product = new Product();
product.setName("ProductName");
product.setDescription("<p>Description</p>")
}
That said, I will have to mock the product in three different ways:
Product mockup with description without HTML tags
Product mockup with description with valid HTML tags
Product mockup with description with invalid HTML tags
I thought of creating a buildProduct() for each case, but this leads to code duplication.
I thought about splitting this into three different and isolated tests, but it doesn't seem to make sense to create several different tests for similar situations.
What will be the cleanest way to do this, bearing in mind that the objective is not only to validate the tests but also to make the test as clean and readable as possible?

Answer 1

Given that you are using Java, there is no nice way to do this. The reason is that there is no nice way to copy an object and change one or more properties, just like you can do in Kotlin (check here for further details).
Having said that you have two options.
The first one is creating a utility class that actually creates all these different objects. Yes, code would be duplicated but at least this ugliness would be hidden in a very specific file.
public class TestObjects {
public static Product productWithDescriptionContainingNoHtmlTags() {
Product product = new Product();
product.setName("ProductName");
product.setDescription("No HTML Tags");
return product;
}
public static Product productWithDescriptionContainingValidHtmlTags() {
Product product = new Product();
product.setName("ProductName");
product.setDescription("<p>Description</p>")
return product;
}
public static Product productWithDescriptionContainingInvalidHtmlTags() {
Product product = new Product();
product.setName("ProductName");
product.setDescription("<invalid>Description</invalid>")
return product;
}
}
Then in your test class, you would only need to use these methods where suited.
The second one could be adding a constructor to your Product class that receives both name and description:
public class Product {
private String name;
private String description;
public Product() { }
public Product(String name, String description) {
this.name = name;
this.description = description;
}
}
Then in your test class, you could do something like this to create such objects:
private Product productWithDescriptionContainingNoHtmlTags =
new Product("ProductName", "No HTML Tags");
private Product productWithDescriptionContainingValidHtmlTags =
new Product("ProductName", "<p>Description</p>");
private Product productWithDescriptionContainingInvalidHtmlTags =
new Product("ProductName", "<invalid>Description</invalid>");
As a side note, one nice trick when you need to test some different scenarios without creating multiple tests is using Parameterized tests. Something along the following lines:
private static Stream<Arguments> products() {
return Stream.of(
Arguments.of(new Product("ProductName", "No HTML Tags"), true),
Arguments.of(new Product("ProductName", "<p>Description</p>"), true),
Arguments.of(new Product("ProductName", "<invalid>Description</invalid>"), false)
);
}
#ParameterizedTest
#MethodSource("products")
void assertProductsValidity(Product product, boolean isValid) {
// Your test here
}
Check https://www.baeldung.com/parameterized-tests-junit-5#6-method for more details.