Testing mail code in Spring Boot application
Whilst building a Spring Boot application you may encounter a need of adding a mail configuration. Actually, configuring the mail in Spring Boot does not differ much from configuring it in Spring Bootless application. But how to test that mail configuration and submission is working fine? Let’s have a look.
I assume that we have a simple Spring Boot application bootstrapped. If not, the easiest way to do it is by using the Spring Initializr.
Adding javax.mail dependency
We start by adding javax.mail dependency to build.gradle: compile 'javax.mail:mail:1.4.1'. We will also need Spring Context Support (if not present) that contains JavaMailSender support class. The dependency is: compile("org.springframework:spring-context-support")
Java-based Configuration
Spring Boot favors Java-based configuration. In order to add mail configuration, we add MailConfiguration class annotated with @Configuration annotation. The properties are stored in mail.properties (it is not required, though). Property values can be injected directly into beans using the @Value annotation:
@Configuration
@PropertySource("classpath:mail.properties")
public class MailConfiguration {
@Value("${mail.protocol}")
private String protocol;
@Value("${mail.host}")
private String host;
@Value("${mail.port}")
private int port;
@Value("${mail.smtp.auth}")
private boolean auth;
@Value("${mail.smtp.starttls.enable}")
private boolean starttls;
@Value("${mail.from}")
private String from;
@Value("${mail.username}")
private String username;
@Value("${mail.password}")
private String password;
@Bean
public JavaMailSender javaMailSender() {
JavaMailSenderImpl mailSender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();
Properties mailProperties = new Properties();
mailProperties.put("mail.smtp.auth", auth);
mailProperties.put("mail.smtp.starttls.enable", starttls);
mailSender.setJavaMailProperties(mailProperties);
mailSender.setHost(host);
mailSender.setPort(port);
mailSender.setProtocol(protocol);
mailSender.setUsername(username);
mailSender.setPassword(password);
return mailSender;
}
}The @PropertySource annotation makes mail.properties available for injection with @Value. annotation. If not done, you may expect an exception: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Could not resolve placeholder '<name>' in string value "${<name>}".
And the mail.properties:
mail.protocol=smtp
mail.host=localhost
mail.port=25
mail.smtp.auth=false
mail.smtp.starttls.enable=false
mail.from=me@localhost
mail.username=
mail.password=@ConfigurationProperties beans. I created a follow up post that describes how to use @ConfigurationProperties in Spring Boot. Have a look here: Using @ConfigurationProperties in Spring Boot
Mail endpoint
In order to be able to send an email in our application, we can create a REST endpoint. We can use Spring’s SimpleMailMessage in order to quickly implement this endpoint. Let’s have a look:
@RestController
class MailSubmissionController {
private final JavaMailSender javaMailSender;
@Autowired
MailSubmissionController(JavaMailSender javaMailSender) {
this.javaMailSender = javaMailSender;
}
@RequestMapping("/mail")
@ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.CREATED)
SimpleMailMessage send() {
SimpleMailMessage mailMessage = new SimpleMailMessage();
mailMessage.setTo("someone@localhost");
mailMessage.setReplyTo("someone@localhost");
mailMessage.setFrom("someone@localhost");
mailMessage.setSubject("Lorem ipsum");
mailMessage.setText("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet [...]");
javaMailSender.send(mailMessage);
return mailMessage;
}
}Running the application
We are now ready to run the application. If you use CLI, type: gradle bootRun, open the browser and navigate to localhost:8080/mail. What you should see is actually an error, saying that mail server connection failed. As expected.
Fake SMTP Server
FakeSMTP is a free Fake SMTP Server with GUI, written in Java, for testing emails in applications. We will use it to verify if the submission works. Please download the application and simply run it by invoking: java -jar fakeSMTP-<version>.jar. After launching Fake SMTP Server, start the server.
Now you can invoke REST endpoint again and see the result in Fake SMTP!
But by testing I did not mean manual testing! The application is still useful, but we want to automatically test mail code.
Unit testing mail code
To be able to automatically test the mail submission, we will use Wiser - a framework / utility for unit testing mail based on SubEtha SMTP. SubEthaSMTP’s simple, low-level API is suitable for writing almost any kind of mail-receiving application.
Using Wiser is very simple. Firstly, we need to add a test dependency to build.gradle: testCompile("org.subethamail:subethasmtp:3.1.7"). Secondly, we create an integration test with, JUnit, Spring and and Wiser:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes = Application.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
public class MailSubmissionControllerTest {
private Wiser wiser;
@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;
private MockMvc mockMvc;
@Before
public void setUp() throws Exception {
wiser = new Wiser();
wiser.start();
mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders.webAppContextSetup(wac).build();
}
@After
public void tearDown() throws Exception {
wiser.stop();
}
@Test
public void send() throws Exception {
// act
mockMvc.perform(get("/mail"))
.andExpect(status().isCreated());
// assert
assertReceivedMessage(wiser)
.from("someone@localhosts")
.to("someone@localhost")
.withSubject("Lorem ipsum")
.withContent("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet [...]");
}
}The SMTP server is initialized, started in @Before method and stopped in @Teardown method. After sending a message, the assertion is made. The assertion needs to be created, as the framework does not provide any. As you will notice, we need to operate on Wiser object, that provides a list of received messages:
public class WiserAssertions {
private final List<WiserMessage> messages;
public static WiserAssertions assertReceivedMessage(Wiser wiser) {
return new WiserAssertions(wiser.getMessages());
}
private WiserAssertions(List<WiserMessage> messages) {
this.messages = messages;
}
public WiserAssertions from(String from) {
findFirstOrElseThrow(m -> m.getEnvelopeSender().equals(from),
assertionError("No message from [{0}] found!", from));
return this;
}
public WiserAssertions to(String to) {
findFirstOrElseThrow(m -> m.getEnvelopeReceiver().equals(to),
assertionError("No message to [{0}] found!", to));
return this;
}
public WiserAssertions withSubject(String subject) {
Predicate<WiserMessage> predicate = m -> subject.equals(unchecked(getMimeMessage(m)::getSubject));
findFirstOrElseThrow(predicate,
assertionError("No message with subject [{0}] found!", subject));
return this;
}
public WiserAssertions withContent(String content) {
findFirstOrElseThrow(m -> {
ThrowingSupplier<String> contentAsString =
() -> ((String) getMimeMessage(m).getContent()).trim();
return content.equals(unchecked(contentAsString));
}, assertionError("No message with content [{0}] found!", content));
return this;
}
private void findFirstOrElseThrow(Predicate<WiserMessage> predicate, Supplier<AssertionError> exceptionSupplier) {
messages.stream().filter(predicate)
.findFirst().orElseThrow(exceptionSupplier);
}
private MimeMessage getMimeMessage(WiserMessage wiserMessage) {
return unchecked(wiserMessage::getMimeMessage);
}
private static Supplier<AssertionError> assertionError(String errorMessage, String... args) {
return () -> new AssertionError(MessageFormat.format(errorMessage, args));
}
public static <T> T unchecked(ThrowingSupplier<T> supplier) {
try {
return supplier.get();
} catch (Throwable e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
interface ThrowingSupplier<T> {
T get() throws Throwable;
}
}
Summary
With just couple of lines of code we were able to automatically test mail code. The example presented in this article is not sophisticated but it shows how easy it is to get started with SubEtha SMTP and Wiser.
How do you test your mail code?
