TestNG allows you to run your test methods in separate threads. You can configure the size of the thread pool and the time-out and TestNG takes care of the rest. For example, consider the following test class invoked with a thread pool size of 2:
@Test
public class A {
public void g1() { log("g1"); }
public void g2() { log("g2"); }
public void g3() { log("g3"); }
public void g4() { log("g4"); }
}
The output:
Thread:9 g4() Thread:8 g2() Thread:8 g3() Thread:9 g1()
As you can see, TestNG created a pool of two threads and it is dispatching all the test methods on each of these threads as they become available. You can also configure the threading strategy (“each test method in its own thread”, “each class in its own thread”, etc…) and the time out for each of these thread pools.
Another popular feature of TestNG is data providers. Let’s add two methods and two data providers to the test class above:
@DataProvider()
public Object[][] dp1() {
return new Object[][] {
new Object[] { 1 },
new Object[] { 2 },
new Object[] { 3 },
new Object[] { 4 },
};
}
@Test(dataProvider = "dp1")
public void f1(Integer n) {
log("f1", n);
}
@DataProvider
public Object[][] dp2() {
return new Object[][] {
new Object[] { 11 },
new Object[] { 12 },
new Object[] { 13 },
new Object[] { 14 },
};
}
@Test(dataProvider = "dp2")
public void f2(Integer n) {
log("f2", n);
}
f1() will be invoked with 1, 2, 3 and 4 while t2() will receive 11, 12, 13 and 14.
Here is the output (each color represents a different kind of test method: one for the four methods that don’t use any data provider, one for f1() and one for f2():
Thread:9 g4() Thread:8 g3() Thread:9 g2() Thread:8 f1(1) Thread:9 f2(11) Thread:9 f2(12) Thread:9 f2(13) Thread:8 f1(2) Thread:9 f2(14) Thread:8 f1(3) Thread:9 g1() Thread:8 f1(4)
Everything is still running on a thread pool of size 2, but you will also notice that the two methods using data providers (f1() and f2()) are invoked in sequence on the same thread. In other words, f1() is invoked on one thread an then it remains on that same thread until it has received all the values from its data provider (1, 2, 3 and then 4). Same thing for f2() and the values 11, 12, 13 and 14.
Extending multithreading to data providers has been one of the most requested features for TestNG, and I’m happy to announce that it’s now implemented and it will be part of the next release of TestNG.
In order to make a data provider run in a pool of threads, you use the new annotation parallel:
@DataProvider(parallel = true)
public Object[][] dp2() {
Data Providers are run in their own thread pool, which is different from the thread pool used for test methods. Let’s run the example above again with a test thread pool size of 2 and a data provider thread pool of 3:
Thread:9 g4() Thread:8 g3() Thread:8 g2() Thread:9 f1(1) Thread:10 f2(11) Thread:11 f2(12) Thread:12 f2(13) Thread:9 f1(2) Thread:12 f2(14) Thread:9 f1(3) Thread:9 f1(4) Thread:8 g1()
In this run, both the g methods and f1() are running on the test thread pool (remember that even though f1() is using a data provider, it’s not using parallel=true, so it’s using the test thread pool). The novelty here is that the four invocations of f2() are now happening on three different threads (10, 11 and 12). These three threads are part of the data provider thread pool, which was configured with a size of three.
Let’s now make the other data provider parallel as well:
@DataProvider(parallel = true)
public Object[][] dp1() {
The output:
Thread:9 g4() Thread:8 g3() Thread:8 g2() Thread:10 f2(11) Thread:11 f1(1) Thread:12 f1(2) Thread:10 f1(3) Thread:11 f1(4) Thread:12 f2(12) Thread:11 f2(13) Thread:10 f2(14) Thread:9 g1()
This time, only the g() methods are using the test thread pool (threads 8 and 9) while the two methods using a data provider (f1() and f2()) are sharing the data provider thread pool (threads 10, 11 and 12).
With this new feature, TestNG makes it even easier to run your tests in parallel, and tests that are using data providers returning large sets of values are likely to see a significant decrease in running time.
Parallel data providers will be part of TestNG 5.10 but you can already download the beta and try it for yourself.