SpringRunner vs SpringBootTest

Question

In unit test, what are the differences between @Runwith(SpringRunner.class) & @SpringBootTest?

Can you explain to me the use cases of each one?

Have you read any of the various documentation? What's still unclear? — jonrsharpe, Nov 17 '19 at 14:13
The obvious difference is Spring test vs Spring boot test, but it's very broad question — Ori Marko, Nov 17 '19 at 14:20
I would understand when should I use @SpringBootTest in addition of SpringRunner. — zouari, Nov 17 '19 at 14:46
RunWith is no longer required as of JUnit 5 and can be dropped from your unit test code. — Tony B, Jul 22 '21 at 15:05

score 112 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 17 '19 at 15:28

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class) : You need this annotation to just enable spring boot features like @Autowire, @MockBean etc.. during junit testing

is used to provide a bridge between Spring Boot test features and JUnit. Whenever we are using any Spring Boot testing features in our JUnit tests, this annotation will be required.

@SpringBootTest : This annotation is used to load complete application context for end to end integration testing

The @SpringBootTest annotation can be used when we need to bootstrap the entire container. The annotation works by creating the ApplicationContext that will be utilized in our tests.

Here is the article with clear examples on both scenarios Baeldung

The Baeldung link is one of the best ones explaining the concept, however its dependencies are not correct and hence not working. Although I included all the dependencies in my pom, I get "Class cannot be resolved to a type". — Cagin Uludamar, Dec 09 '22 at 05:40

score 54 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 15 '20 at 06:02

@RunWith is an old annotation from JUnit 4 to use test runners. If you're using JUnit 5 (Jupiter), you should use @ExtendWith to use JUnit extensions

See https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/spring-boot-features.html#boot-features-testing

"If you are using JUnit 4, don’t forget to also add @RunWith(SpringRunner.class) to your test, otherwise the annotations will be ignored. If you are using JUnit 5, there’s no need to add the equivalent @ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class) as @SpringBootTest and the other @…Test annotations are already annotated with it.

I just dropped the RunWith annotation when I converted to JUnit 5. Seems to be no need to use ExtendWith either as your quote from the Spring docs makes clear. — Tony B, Jul 22 '21 at 15:03

score 16 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 17 '19 at 15:26

From spring.io :

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class) tells JUnit to run using Spring’s testing support. SpringRunner is the new name for SpringJUnit4ClassRunner, it’s just a bit easier on the eye.

@SpringBootTest is saying “bootstrap with Spring Boot’s support” (e.g. load application.properties and give me all the Spring Boot goodness)

So if you don't need everything that Spring Boot loads for your integration test, you may not need @SpringBootTest

SpringRunner vs SpringBootTest

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