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» Testing your rules
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<h1 class="post-title-main">Testing your rules</h1>
</div>
<div class="post-content" data-github-edit-url="https://github.com/pmd/pmd/blob/master/docs/pages/pmd/userdocs/extending/testing.md">
<div class="summary">Learn how to use PMD's simple test framework for unit testing rules.</div>
<div id="inline-toc"><!-- empty, move TOC here when screen size too small --></div>
<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2>
<p>Good rules have tests. At least a positive test case - a code example, that triggers the rule and reports
a violation - and a negative test case - a code example, that doesnt trigger the rule - should be created.
Of course, the more tests, the better the rule is verified. If the rule is more complex or defines properties,
with which the behavior can be modified, then these different cases can also be tested.</p>
<p>And if there is a bug fix for a rule, be it a false positive or a false negative case, it should be accompanied
with an additional test case, so that the bug is not accidentally reintroduced later on.</p>
<h2 id="how-it-works">How it works</h2>
<p>PMDs built-in rules are organized in rulesets, where all rules belonging to the same category are placed
in a single ruleset, such as “category/java/bestpractices.xml”.
Each category-ruleset has a single abstract base test class, from which the individual test classes inherit.
We have one test class per rule, which executes all test cases for a single rule. The actual test cases are
stored in separate XML files, for each rule a separate file is used.</p>
<p>All the test classes inherit from <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">net.sourceforge.pmd.testframework.PmdRuleTst</code>,
which provides the seamless integration with JUnit. This base class determines the language, the category name
and the rule name from the concrete test class. It then searches the test code on its own.
E.g. the individual rule test class
<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.bestpractices.AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethodTest</code> tests the
rule with the name “AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethod”, which is in the category “bestpractices” for the
language “java”.</p>
<p>The test code (see below <a href="#test-xml-reference">Test XML Reference</a>) describes the test case completely with
the expected behavior like number of expected rule violations, where the violations are expected, and so on.</p>
<p>When you are running the test class in your IDE (e.g. Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA) you can also select a single
test case and just execute this one.</p>
<h2 id="where-to-place-the-test-code">Where to place the test code</h2>
<p>The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">PmdRuleTst</code> class searches the XML file, that describes the test cases for a certain rule
using the following convention:
The XML file is a test resource, so it is searched in the tree under <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">src/test/resources</code>.</p>
<p>The sub package <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">xml</code> of the test classs package should contain a file with the same name as the rules name
which is under test.</p>
<p>For example, to test the rule “AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethod”, the fully qualified test class is:</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.bestpractices.AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethodTest
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>The test code for the rule can be found in the file:</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>src/test/resources/net/sourceforge/pmd/lang/java/rule/bestpractices/xml/AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethod.xml
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>In general, the class name and file name pattern for the test class and data is this:</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.&lt;Language Terse Name&gt;.rule.&lt;Category Name&gt;.&lt;Rule Name&gt;Test
src/test/resources/net/sourceforge/pmd/lang/&lt;Language Terse Name&gt;/rule/&lt;Category Name&gt;/xml/&lt;Rule Name&gt;.xml
</code></pre></div></div>
<div class="alert alert-success" role="alert"><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> <b>Tip:</b> This convention allows you to quickly find the test cases for a given rule:
Just search in the project for a file <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;RuleName&gt;.xml</code>. Search for a class <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;Rule Name&gt;Test</code> to find the
unit test class for the given rule. And if the rule is a Java-based rule, the search for <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;Rule Name&gt;Rule</code>
finds the rule implementation class.</div>
<div class="alert alert-info" role="alert"><i class="fa fa-info-circle"></i> <b>Note:</b> If you want to use the test framework with a different package structure,
see <a href="#using-the-test-framework-externally">Using the test framework externally</a>.</div>
<h2 id="simple-example">Simple example</h2>
<h3 id="test-class-abstractclasswithoutabstractmethodtest">Test Class: AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethodTest</h3>
<p>This class inherits from <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">PmdRuleTst</code> and is located in the package “bestpractices”, since the rule
belongs to the category “Best Practices”:</p>
<div class="language-java highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="kn">package</span> <span class="nn">net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.bestpractices</span><span class="o">;</span>
<span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">net.sourceforge.pmd.testframework.PmdRuleTst</span><span class="o">;</span>
<span class="kd">public</span> <span class="kd">class</span> <span class="nc">AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethodTest</span> <span class="kd">extends</span> <span class="nc">PmdRuleTst</span> <span class="o">{</span>
<span class="c1">// no additional unit tests</span>
<span class="o">}</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<div class="alert alert-info" role="alert"><i class="fa fa-info-circle"></i> <b>Note:</b> You can also add additionally standard JUnit test methods annotated with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@Test</code> to
this test class.</div>
<h3 id="test-data-avoidbranchingstatementaslastinloopxml">Test Data: AvoidBranchingStatementAsLastInLoop.xml</h3>
<p>This is a stripped down example which just contains two test cases.</p>
<div class="language-xml highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="cp">&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;test-data</span>
<span class="na">xmlns=</span><span class="s">"http://pmd.sourceforge.net/rule-tests"</span>
<span class="na">xmlns:xsi=</span><span class="s">"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"</span>
<span class="na">xsi:schemaLocation=</span><span class="s">"http://pmd.sourceforge.net/rule-tests https://pmd.sourceforge.io/rule-tests_1_0_0.xsd"</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;test-code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;description&gt;</span>concrete class<span class="nt">&lt;/description&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;expected-problems&gt;</span>0<span class="nt">&lt;/expected-problems&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;code&gt;</span><span class="cp">&lt;![CDATA[
public class Foo {}
]]&gt;</span><span class="nt">&lt;/code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/test-code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;test-code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;description&gt;</span>failure case<span class="nt">&lt;/description&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;expected-problems&gt;</span>1<span class="nt">&lt;/expected-problems&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;expected-linenumbers&gt;</span>1<span class="nt">&lt;/expected-linenumbers&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;code&gt;</span><span class="cp">&lt;![CDATA[
public abstract class Foo {}
]]&gt;</span><span class="nt">&lt;/code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/test-code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/test-data&gt;</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Each test case is in an own <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-code&gt;</code> element. The first defines 0 expected problems, means this code doesnt
trigger the rule. The second test case expects 1 problem. Since the rule violations also report the exact AST node,
you can verify the line number, too.</p>
<h2 id="test-xml-reference">Test XML Reference</h2>
<p>The root element is <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-data&gt;</code>. It can contain one or more <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-code&gt;</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-fragment&gt;</code> elements.
Each <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-code&gt;</code> element defines a single test case. <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-fragment&gt;</code> elements are used to share code snippets
between different test cases.</p>
<div class="alert alert-info" role="alert"><i class="fa fa-info-circle"></i> <b>Note:</b> The XML schema is available at <a href="https://github.com/pmd/pmd/blob/master/pmd-test/src/main/resources/rule-tests_1_0_0.xsd">rule-tests.xsd</a>.</div>
<h3 id="test-code-attributes"><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-code&gt;</code> attributes</h3>
<p>The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-code&gt;</code> elements understands the following optional attributes:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>disabled</strong>: By default, its <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">false</code>. Set it to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">true</code>, to ignore and skip a test case.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>focused</strong>: By default, its <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">false</code>. Set it to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">true</code>, to ignore all other test cases.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>useAuxClasspath</strong>: <em>deprecated since PMD 6.48.0: assumed true, has no effect anymore.</em>
By default, its <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">true</code>. Set it to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">false</code> to reproduce issues which only
appear without type resolution.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>reinitializeRule</strong>: <em>deprecated since PMD 6.48.0: assumed true, has no effect anymore.</em>
By default, its <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">true</code>, so each test case starts with a fresh instantiated rule. Set it
to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">false</code> to reproduce cases, where the previous run has influences.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>regressionTest</strong>: <em>deprecated since PMD 6.48.0: Use <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">disabled</code> instead. Note: It has the opposite boolean
semantic.</em> By default, its <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">true</code>. Set it to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">false</code>, to ignore and skip a test case.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="test-code-children"><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-code&gt;</code> children</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;description&gt;</code></strong>: Short description of the test case. This will be the JUnit test name in the report.
If applicable, this description should contain a reference to the bug number, this test case reproduces.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;rule-property&gt;</code></strong>: Optional rule properties, if the rule is configurable. Just add multiple elements, to
set multiple properties for one test case. For an example, see below.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;expected-problems&gt;</code></strong>: The the raw number of expected rule violations, that this rule is expected to report.
For false-positive test cases, this is always “0”. For false-negative test cases, it can be any positive number.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;expected-linenumbers&gt;</code></strong>: Optional element. Its a comma separated list of line numbers.
If there are rule violations reported, then this allows you to
assert the line numbers. Useful if multiple violations should be detected and to be sure that
false positives and negatives dont erase each other.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;expected-messages&gt;</code></strong>: Optional element, with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;message&gt;</code> elements as children.
Can be used to validate the correct error message, e.g. if the error message references a variable name.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code&gt;</code></strong>: Either the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code&gt;</code> element or the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-ref&gt;</code> element is required. It provides the actual code
snippet on which the rule is executed. The code itself is usually wrapped in a “CDATA” section, so that no
further XML escapes (entity references such as &amp;lt;) are necessary.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-ref id=...&gt;</code></strong>: Alternative to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code&gt;</code>. References a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-fragment&gt;</code> defined earlier in the file.
This allows you to share the same code snippet with several test cases. The attribute <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">id</code> must match the
id of the references code fragment.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;source-type&gt;</code></strong>: Optional element that specifies a specific language version. This can be used
to select a specific parser version for parsing the code snippet. If not given, the default version of
the rules language is used. This element can almost always be omitted.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="code-fragment"><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-fragment&gt;</code></h3>
<p>The code fragment has just one required attribute: <strong>id</strong>. This is used to reference it via a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-ref&gt;</code> element
inside a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;test-code&gt;</code>. Similar like the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code&gt;</code> element, the content of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;code-fragment&gt;</code> is usually wrapped
in a “CDATA” section, so that no further XML escapes (entity references such as &amp;lt;) are necessary.</p>
<h3 id="complete-xml-example">Complete XML example</h3>
<div class="language-xml highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="cp">&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;test-data</span>
<span class="na">xmlns=</span><span class="s">"http://pmd.sourceforge.net/rule-tests"</span>
<span class="na">xmlns:xsi=</span><span class="s">"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"</span>
<span class="na">xsi:schemaLocation=</span><span class="s">"http://pmd.sourceforge.net/rule-tests https://pmd.sourceforge.io/rule-tests_1_0_0.xsd"</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;test-code</span> <span class="na">reinitializeRule=</span><span class="s">"true"</span> <span class="na">disabled=</span><span class="s">"false"</span> <span class="na">useAuxClasspath=</span><span class="s">"true"</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;description&gt;</span>Just a description, will be used as the test name for JUnit in the reports<span class="nt">&lt;/description&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;rule-property</span> <span class="na">name=</span><span class="s">"somePropName"</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span>propValue<span class="nt">&lt;/rule-property&gt;</span> <span class="c">&lt;!-- optional --&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;expected-problems&gt;</span>2<span class="nt">&lt;/expected-problems&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;expected-linenumbers&gt;</span>5,14<span class="nt">&lt;/expected-linenumbers&gt;</span> <span class="c">&lt;!-- optional --&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;expected-messages&gt;</span> <span class="c">&lt;!-- optional --&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;message&gt;</span>Violation message 1<span class="nt">&lt;/message&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;message&gt;</span>Violation message 2<span class="nt">&lt;/message&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/expected-messages&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;code&gt;</span><span class="cp">&lt;![CDATA[
public class ConsistentReturn {
public Boolean foo() {
}
}
]]&gt;</span><span class="nt">&lt;/code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;source-type&gt;</span>java 1.5<span class="nt">&lt;/source-type&gt;</span> <span class="c">&lt;!-- optional --&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/test-code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;code-fragment</span> <span class="na">id=</span><span class="s">"codeSnippet1"</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span><span class="cp">&lt;![CDATA[
public class ConsistentReturn {
public Boolean foo() {
}
}
]]&gt;</span><span class="nt">&lt;/code-fragment&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;test-code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;description&gt;</span>test case using a code fragment<span class="nt">&lt;/description&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;expected-problems&gt;</span>0<span class="nt">&lt;/expected-problems&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;code-ref</span> <span class="na">id=</span><span class="s">"codeSnippet1"</span><span class="nt">/&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/test-code&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/test-data&gt;</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<div class="alert alert-info" role="alert"><i class="fa fa-info-circle"></i> <b>Note:</b> For better readability, the indentation should be 4 for spaces and no tabs.
Each test-code should be separated by a blank line. CDATA
sections are only required for the code snippets which should be formatted with indentation for
better readability. The description can be written directly without a CDATA section.</div>
<h2 id="using-the-test-framework-externally">Using the test framework externally</h2>
<p>It is also possible to use the test framework for custom rules developed outside the PMD source base.
Therefore you just need to reference the dependency <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-test</code>.</p>
<p>For maven, you can use this snippet:</p>
<div class="language-xml highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="nt">&lt;dependency&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;groupId&gt;</span>net.sourceforge.pmd<span class="nt">&lt;/groupId&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;artifactId&gt;</span>pmd-test<span class="nt">&lt;/artifactId&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;version&gt;</span>6.50.0-SNAPSHOT<span class="nt">&lt;/version&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;scope&gt;</span>test<span class="nt">&lt;/scope&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/dependency&gt;</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Then proceed as described earlier: create your test class, create your test cases and run the unit test.</p>
<p>There is one difference however: Since your package structure is probably different, youll need to register
the rule test manually, as SimpleAggregatorTst will fail to determine it correctly from the package and class names:</p>
<div class="language-java highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="kn">package</span> <span class="nn">com.example.pmd.rules</span><span class="o">;</span>
<span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">net.sourceforge.pmd.testframework.SimpleAggregatorTst</span><span class="o">;</span>
<span class="kd">public</span> <span class="kd">class</span> <span class="nc">CustomRuleTest</span> <span class="kd">extends</span> <span class="nc">SimpleAggregatorTst</span> <span class="o">{</span>
<span class="nd">@Override</span>
<span class="kd">public</span> <span class="kt">void</span> <span class="nf">setUp</span><span class="o">()</span> <span class="o">{</span>
<span class="n">addRule</span><span class="o">(</span><span class="s">"com/example/pmd/ruleset.xml"</span><span class="o">,</span> <span class="s">"CustomRule"</span><span class="o">);</span>
<span class="o">}</span>
<span class="o">}</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>This will then search for a rule named “CustomRule” in the ruleset, that is located in “src/main/resources” under
the path “com/example/pmd/ruleset.xml”.</p>
<p>The test data should be placed in an xml file located in “src/test/resources” under the path
“com/example/pmd/rules/xml/CustomRule.xml”.</p>
<h2 id="how-the-test-framework-is-implemented">How the test framework is implemented</h2>
<p>The framework uses a custom JUnit test runner under the hood, among a couple of utility classes:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">PmdRuleTst</code>: This is the base class for tests in PMDs code base. It is a subclass of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTst</code> and just
contains the logic to determine the test resources based on the test class name.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">SimpleAggregatorTst</code>: This is a more generic base class for the test classes and defines
the custom JUnit test runner. It doesnt register any test cases on its own.
It itself is a subclass of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTst</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The maven module “pmd-test-schema” contains the logic to parse the XML files and provide a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTestCollection</code>. This
in turn contains a list of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTestDescriptor</code>s. Each rule test descriptor describes a single test case.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTst</code>: uses the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">TestSchemaParser</code> from module “pmd-test-schema” to parse the test cases, executes each
rule test descriptor and asserts the results.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">PMDTestRunner</code>: A custom JUnit test runner, that combines two separate test runners: The custom <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTestRunner</code>
and the standard <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">JUnit4</code> test runner. This combination allows you to add additional standard unit test methods
annotated with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@Test</code> to your test class.</p>
<p><em>Note:</em> Since the test class is executed through two test runners, it is actually instantiated twice. Be aware
of this, if you do any initialization in the constructor. Also, the static hooks <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@BeforeClass</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@AfterClass</code>
will be executed twice.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTestRunner</code>: This test runner executes the test descriptors with the help of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">RuleTst</code>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
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