A plethora of tools is available in the tech market for automated testing of Java/J2EE applications. However, for this blog, I have winnowed down the long list of Java testing tools to the most used and popular ones, based on the reviews of some Java developers I recently talked to. So, don’t feel offended I miss out on your favorite Java testing tool, as there is no perfect tool in this world. The 8 Java testing tools/frameworks, I am going to discuss in this blog are meant for unit testing or functional testing or for specific types of Java components such as view, logic and validation components.

8 Useful Tools/Frameworks for Java Testing

#1 JUnit

Without a doubt, JUnit is the most popular Java testing framework out there. The framework is open source and is widely used by Java developers for writing & executing unit test cases. JUnit has also been one of the major forces behind the adoption of test-driven development methodologies. JUnit comes as a packaged JAR (Java ARchive) library, and you can download junit.jar and hamcrest-core.jar files from GitHub before placing them in your test class path.

The Java testing framework is very simple to use, and provides annotations for test method identifications. Assertion is another exciting feature of JUnit which it uses to test the expected results. With JUnit, Java developers can quickly run unit tests and get instant results via red/green progress bar.

Although JUnit is a popular unit testing framework, it can also be used for integration and acceptance tests. So, you can easily integrate JUnit with standard IDEs, like eclipse and netbeans.

#2 JWalk

JWalk is a Java testing tool that relies on Lazy, Systematic Unit Testing. The tool performs bounded exhaustive testing of any compiled Java class, supplied by the programmer.

Although JUnit enables to frequently retest the modified code, the manually created test scripts often remain incomplete. But that’s not the case with JWalk, which operates directly on the compiled code for Java classes and uses a new lazy method for inducing the changing design of a class on the fly. Besides, fully automated checking gradually takes over manual inspection of the test report.

For systematic testing, JWalk performs exhaustive testing of the whole state-space of the object to ensure compliance with the specification. The tool is smart enough to infer the specification from hints supplied by the programmer during the testing process, and from smart assumptions made about the intended design of the code.

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