The Maven Cookbook

You need to pass configuration parameters to TestNG unit tests.

Consider the following TestNG unit test which declares the parameter "databaseHostname" using the @Parameters annotation.

package org.sonatype.mcookbook;

import org.testng.annotations.Parameters;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;

@Test
public class SeriousComponentTest {

  @Parameters({"databaseHostname"})
  @Test
  public void testSeriousness(String databaseHostname) throws Exception {
    assert SeriousComponent.testSeriousness("SAD");
    assert SeriousComponent.testSeriousness("SERIOUS");
    assert SeriousComponent.testSeriousness("CRAZY");
    assert !SeriousComponent.testSeriousness("FUNNY");
    System.out.println( "Database Hostname: " + databaseHostname );
  }
}

This "databaseHostname" parameter can be configured by using the systemProperties configuration parameter of the Maven Surefire plugin. The following POM passes in a value of "testDb01" for the "databaseHostname" test parameter.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" 
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 
           http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>org.sonatype.mcookbook</groupId>
  <artifactId>testng-config</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>testng-config</name>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.5</source>
          <target>1.5</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <systemProperties>
            <property>
              <name>databaseHostname</name>
              <value>testDb01</value>
            </property>
          </systemProperties>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
      <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
      <version>5.10</version>
      <classifier>jdk15</classifier>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

</project>

Running the test phase will execute the unit test passing the value from the POM to the unit test as a system property.

$ mvn test
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building testng-config
[INFO]    task-segment: [test]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [resources:resources {execution: default-resources}]
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (MacRoman actually) to copy filtered 
resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] Copying 0 resource
[INFO] [compiler:compile {execution: default-compile}]
[INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date
[INFO] [resources:testResources {execution: default-testResources}]
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (MacRoman actually) to copy filtered 
resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] Copying 0 resource
[INFO] [compiler:testCompile {execution: default-testCompile}]
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /Users/Tim/Library/Code/sonatype/
maven-cookbook/mcookbook-examples/unit/testng-config/target/test-classes
[INFO] [surefire:test {execution: default-test}]
[INFO] Surefire report directory: /Users/Tim/Library/Code/sonatype/
maven-cookbook/mcookbook-examples/unit/testng-config/target/surefire-reports

-------------------------------------------------------
 T E S T S
-------------------------------------------------------
Running TestSuite
Database Hostname: testDb01
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.358 sec

Results :

Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 4 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Thu Nov 26 13:32:44 CST 2009
[INFO] Final Memory: 17M/80M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more information about TestNG parameters, see the TestNG project documentation here: http://testng.org/doc/documentation-main.html#parameters.