[[testing.spring-applications]]
= Testing Spring Applications

One of the major advantages of dependency injection is that it should make your code easier to unit test.
You can instantiate objects by using the `new` operator without even involving Spring.
You can also use _mock objects_ instead of real dependencies.

Often, you need to move beyond unit testing and start integration testing (with a Spring `ApplicationContext`).
It is useful to be able to perform integration testing without requiring deployment of your application or needing to connect to other infrastructure.

The Spring Framework includes a dedicated test module for such integration testing.
You can declare a dependency directly to `org.springframework:spring-test` or use the `spring-boot-starter-test` starter to pull it in transitively.

If you have not used the `spring-test` module before, you should start by reading the {url-spring-framework-docs}/testing.html[relevant section] of the Spring Framework reference documentation.
