• What can it be used for?
• Documentation
• Getting started
• How to get it
• Podcasts
• Examples
• Approved File Artifacts
• More Info
• LICENSE
• Developer notes

Capturing Human Intelligence - ApprovalTests is an open source assertion/verification library to aid unit testing.

It is compatible with JUnit 3 & 4 and TestNG

Approval Tests can be used for verifying objects that require more than a simple assert. They also come prepackaged with utilities for some common java scenarios including

• HashMaps & Collections
• Long Strings
• Log Files
• JPanels
• Xml
• Html
• Json
• Getting Legacy Code under tests

• ApprovalTests
• ApprovalTests-util

The best way to get started is download and open the Starter Project.
It is a maven project and can be imported in to any editor.

It's on Maven Central, search for 'approvaltests'. If you're using Maven, add this to your pom file:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.approvaltests</groupId>
    <artifactId>approvaltests</artifactId>
    <version>4.0.2</version>
</dependency>

or download the jars from maven central repository

You can watch a bunch of short videos on getting started and using ApprovalTests in Java at youtube.

Note: There are a lot of videos about ApprovalTests in .Net They are equally useful for understanding the concepts despite being in a different programming language.

If you prefer auditory learning, you might enjoy the following podcast (Note: Some of these talk about the .net side)

• Cucumber Podcast
• Hanselminutes
• Herding Code
• The Watir Podcast

ApprovalTests eats it own dogfood, so the best examples are in the source code itself.

None the less, Here's a quick look at some Sample Code

	public class SampleArrayTest extends TestCase
	{
		public void testList() throws Exception
		{
			String[] names = {"Llewellyn", "James", "Dan", "Jason", "Katrina"};
			Arrays.sort(names);
			Approvals.verifyAll("", names);
		}
	}

Will Produce a File

    SampleTest.TestList.received.txt
    [0] = Dan
    [1] = James
    [2] = Jason
    [3] = Katrina
    [4] = Llewellyn

Simply rename this to SampleTest.testList.approved.txt and the test will now pass.

The *.approved.* files must be checked into source your source control. This can be an issue with git as it will change the line endings. The suggested fix is to add *.approved.* binary to your .gitattributes

• Website
• Blog
• Getting Started Doc

Apache 2.0 License

twitter: @LlewellynFalco or #ApprovalTests

The suggested way to contribute to ApprovalTests is to pair with Llewellyn
However, if you are set on forking please read these notes