jEntityTest

jEntityTest is a library that can compare two instances of a class based on their declared fields. Making it easier to check if they are equal. It also contains a hamcrest matcher so that you can use the comparison in assertions. The comparison can further be customized via annotations for each field.

Usage Example

A simple use case would be creating a user via API, then retrieving it and checking it was created correctly:

User createdUser = api.createUser(newUser);
assertThat(createdUser, Entity.isEqualTo(newUser));

In the above case, Entity.isEqualTo, which is part of jEntityTest, will do the comparison between the two objects. Now let's look at the actual fields that the User object has

User fields	newUser values	createdUser values
id		1
firstName	John	John
lastName	Doe	Doe

The id was generated on while creating the user, so we can't know it beforehand. For the comparison to not fail in this case - fields can be decorated with annotations specifying the comparison strategy to be applied, so the user model would be:

public class User{

  @IgnoreComparison
  private String id;
  
  private String firstName;
  
  private String lastName;
  ...

There are a few more comparison strategies that can be applied for any field, that will impact how the comparison is done.

Comparison Strategies available

For a more detailed explanation of each comparison strategy please visit the wiki

ChildEntityComparison

@ChildEntityComparison can be applied to a field if it is an object that you want to also compare by it's fields.

ChildEntityListComparison

@ChildEntityListComparison can be applied to lists, this will compare each item in the list between the expected and actual objects.

DateTimeComparison

@DateTimeComparison can be applied to LocalDateTime fields - and is parameterized to allow for a delta.

StringComparison

@StringComparison can be applied to String fields and can be parameterized to trim, ignore specific characters, or ignore the case.