Parameterized JUnit tests

Sometimes you encounter a problem that just screams for using "parameterized" tests rather than copy/pasting the same method many times.   The test method is basically the same and the only thing that changes is the data passed in.  In this case, consider creating a test case that utilitizes the "Parameterized" class from JUnit.

I recently ran into a problem where our validation of an email address did not allow unicode characters.  The fix was fairly straight-forward, change the regular expression to allow those characters.  Next, it was time to test the change.  Rather than copy/paste separate methods for each set of data, I decided to learn about the Parameterized method.   Below is the result.  The data includes the expected result and the email address to be validated.

JUnit test class

package com.mycompany.client;

import static org.junit.Assert.*;

import java.util.Arrays;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.junit.runners.Parameterized;
import org.junit.runners.Parameterized.Parameters;

import com.mycompany.test.TestServiceUtil;

/**
 * Parameterized test case for validating email addresses against a regular expression.
 * We need to allow unicode characters in the userid portion of the email address, so 
 * these test cases where created to help validate the validateEmailAddress method
 * in the FieldValidationController class.
 * 
 * @author mmiller
 *
 */
@RunWith(Parameterized.class)
public class TestFieldValiationController {

    @Parameters(name = "{index}: {1} is valid email address = {0}")
    public static Iterable

Hope this helps!