We all do text validation in our automation tests to
validate whether the returned value is the same as the expected one or not. I see that
many folks use the assertTrue command instead of assertEquals to validate the
returned text while using assertions from TestNG or JUnit. Let's see why using
assertTrue is bad practice for text comparison.
assertEquals
public static void assertEquals(String actual, String
expected)
Asserts that two Strings are equal. If they are not, an
AssertionError is thrown.
Parameters:
- actual - the actual value
- expected - the expected value
assertTrue
public static void assertTrue(boolean condition)
Asserts that a condition is true. If it isn't, an
AssertionError is thrown.
Parameters:
- condition - the condition to evaluate
Let’s say that I have an automated test script where I would
like to verify the Title of the home page -
we are doing the check using assertTrue as well as assertEquals methods.
String ExpectedTitle = "My All Testing Stories";
@Test
public
void verifyTitleUsingTrue() {
assertTrue(driver.getTitle().equals(ExpectedTitle));
}
@Test
public
void verifyTitleUsingEquals() {
assertEquals(driver.getTitle(), ExpectedTitle);
}
Note* The actual result of driver.getTitle() will be
"My Testing Stories" but the expected one is "My All Testing
Stories".
When you execute this, it will fail as expected and you will see an error message like this for assertTrue:
FAILED: verifyTitleUsingTrue
java.lang.AssertionError: expected [true] but found [false]
Were you able to understand the problem through the error
message? I doubt that.
And this is the error message you will see for assertEquals:
FAILED: verifyTitleUsingEquals
java.lang.AssertionError: expected [My All Testing Stories]
but found [My Testing Stories]
As you can see that the use of assertEquals makes it much
easier to understand what the actual difference between the expected and actual
results is. Also, we can catch the failure without opening the code and trying
to search for the text differences. So, use the proper method as per the
context :)
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