Just as with other application styles, it is extremely important to unit test any code written as part of a batch job as well. The Spring core documentation covers how to unit and integration test with Spring in great detail, so it won't be repeated here. It is important, however, to think about how to 'end to end' test a batch job, which is what this chapter will focus on. The spring-batch-test project includes classes that will help facilitate this end-to-end test approach.
In order for the unit test to run a batch job, the framework must load the job's ApplicationContext. Two annotations are used to trigger this:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class):
Indicates that the class should use Spring's JUnit facilities
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {...}):
Indicates which XML files contain the ApplicationContext.
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = { "/simple-job-launcher-context.xml",
"/jobs/skipSampleJob.xml" })
public class SkipSampleFunctionalTests { ... }