Documentation

You are viewing the documentation for the 2.0.2 release in the 2.0.x series of releases. The latest stable release series is 3.0.x.

§Testing your application

Test source files must be placed in your application’s test folder. You can run them from the Play console using the test and test-only tasks.

§Using specs2

The default way to test a Play 2 application is by using specs2.

Unit specifications extend the org.specs2.mutable.Specification trait and are using the should/in format:

import org.specs2.mutable._

import play.api.test._
import play.api.test.Helpers._

class HelloWorldSpec extends Specification {

  "The 'Hello world' string" should {
    "contain 11 characters" in {
      "Hello world" must have size(11)
    }
    "start with 'Hello'" in {
      "Hello world" must startWith("Hello")
    }
    "end with 'world'" in {
      "Hello world" must endWith("world")
    }
  }
}

§Running in a fake application

If the code you want to test depends of a running application, you can easily create a FakeApplication on the fly:

"Computer model" should {

  "be retrieved by id" in {
    running(FakeApplication()) {
  
      val Some(macintosh) = Computer.findById(21)

      macintosh.name must equalTo("Macintosh")
      macintosh.introduced must beSome.which(dateIs(_, "1984-01-24"))  
  
    }
  }
}

You can also pass (or override) additional configuration to the fake application, or mock any plug-in. For example to create a FakeApplication using a default in memory database:

FakeApplication(additionalConfiguration = inMemoryDatabase())

Next: Writing functional tests