Usage
Automating tests that require a running Axis server instance
Test that require a running Axis server instance should be executed in the integration-test phase instead of the test phase. That means that you need to configure an execution of the maven-failsafe-plugin (we'll see that later) and prevent the maven-surefire-plugin from executing these tests in the test phase. There are several ways this can be done. One is to follow the naming convention recommended by the maven-failsafe-plugin, i.e. to ensure that all integration test cases match one of the following patterns: IT*.java, *IT.java or *ITCase.java. The other option is to completely skip the execution of the maven-surefire-plugin plugin. To do this, add the following configuration to your POM:
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>default-test</id>
<configuration>
<skip>true</skip>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>The Axis server needs to listen on a TCP port to receive HTTP requests. When using a continuous integration tool, it is important to ensure that builds (of different projects or different branches of the same project) can be executed concurrently on the same host without interfering with each other. That implies that one should avoid hard coded port numbers and instead allocate ports dynamically during the build. The reserve-network-port goal of the build-helper-maven-plugin provides the necessary feature to achieve this:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>build-helper-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>reserve-network-port</id>
<goals>
<goal>reserve-network-port</goal>
</goals>
<phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
<configuration>
<portNames>
<portName>axisServerPort</portName>
</portNames>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>This execution will allocate a TCP port and store the port number in the axisServerPort property for later use. We are now ready to configure the Axis server instance:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId>
<artifactId>axis-server-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.4.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>start-server</id>
<goals>
<goal>start-server</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<port>${axisServerPort}</port>
<wsdds>
<wsdd>
<directory>/Users/veithen/projects/axis/maven/axis-server-maven-plugin/target/wsdd</directory>
</wsdd>
</wsdds>
</configuration>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>stop-server</id>
<goals>
<goal>stop-all</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>Note the reference to the axisServerPort property set by the build-helper-maven-plugin. Also note the wsdds option that specifies the location of the WSDD files for the Web services to deploy. These files are typically generated using the wsdl2java-maven-plugin.
The axis-server-maven-plugin assumes that org.apache.axis.server.standalone.StandaloneAxisServer class (not to be confused with the old org.apache.axis.transport.http.SimpleAxisServer class) is in the class path. Therefore, you need to add the relevant dependency to your project:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId>
<artifactId>axis-standalone-server</artifactId>
<version>1.4.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>Obviously the integration tests also need to know the port number of the Axis server. The easiest way is to provide that information using a system property, as shown in the following sample configuration for the maven-failsafe-plugin:
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>integration-test</goal>
<goal>verify</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<includes>
<include>**/*Test.java</include>
</includes>
<systemPropertyVariables>
<axisServerPort>${axisServerPort}</axisServerPort>
</systemPropertyVariables>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>Running integration tests manually in an IDE
The approach described in the previous section is designed to automatically execute integration tests during the Maven build. However, from time to time you may want to execute some of these tests manually in your favorite IDE, for debugging purposes or to develop new test cases. With most modern IDEs, running a test case is easy; the tricky part is to start the Axis server instance with which these test cases will interact. Obviously you could set up the Axis server manually, but this is time consuming and doesn't allow you to leverage all the effort you put into setting up your Maven project. Instead it would be much simpler if you could just run the Maven build and suspend the execution of the build after the execution of the start-server goal. This would give you a fully configured Axis server instance that you can use to execute the test cases from within your IDE.
This use case is supported by the start-server goal. Simply set the axis.server.foreground property on the command line:
mvn clean integration-test -Daxis.server.foreground=true
If you configured your Maven project following the best practices described in the previous section, then this will still start the Axis server on a dynamically allocated port. This is undesirable because you would have to configure your IDE to pass the relevant system property (axisServerPort in the sample configuration) to your test cases, and in addition you would have to constantly update that configuration because the port number changes every time you restart the Axis server. You have two options to avoid this. One is to override the port number on the command line:
mvn clean integration-test -Daxis.server.foreground=true -DaxisServerPort=8080
The other option is to add a foregroundPort property with the port number to the configuration of the start-server goal:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId>
<artifactId>axis-server-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.4.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>start-server</id>
<goals>
<goal>start-server</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<port>${axisServerPort}</port>
<foregroundPort>8080</foregroundPort>
...
</configuration>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>stop-server</id>
<goals>
<goal>stop-all</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>If you now run the start-server goal in foreground mode, it will automatically choose the alternate port number you have specified.
In addition to that configuration you should also write your integration test cases such that they fall back to the specified port number if the relevant system property is not set. For the sample configuration used here, that means that to determine the port number, the following code should be used:
System.getProperty("axisServerPort", "8080")If you set up your project like that, then no additional configuration is required in your IDE and you only need to pass the axis.server.foreground property to Maven.