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Testcontainers container lifecycle management using JUnit 5

Learn different approaches to manage container lifecycle with Testcontainers using JUnit 5 lifecycle callbacks, extension annotations, and the singleton containers pattern.

Java Testing with Docker

20 minutes

1

Create the project

2

Lifecycle callbacks

3

Extension annotations

4

Singleton containers

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JUnit 5 lifecycle callbacks

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When testing with Testcontainers, you want to start the required containers before executing any tests and remove them afterwards. You can use JUnit 5 @BeforeAll and @AfterAll lifecycle callback methods for this:

package com.testcontainers.demo;

import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals;
import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertTrue;

import java.util.List;
import java.util.Optional;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.AfterAll;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeAll;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.testcontainers.postgresql.PostgreSQLContainer;

class CustomerServiceWithLifeCycleCallbacksTest {

  static PostgreSQLContainer postgres = new PostgreSQLContainer(
    "postgres:16-alpine"
  );

  CustomerService customerService;

  @BeforeAll
  static void startContainers() {
    postgres.start();
  }

  @AfterAll
  static void stopContainers() {
    postgres.stop();
  }

  @BeforeEach
  void setUp() {
    customerService =
    new CustomerService(
      postgres.getJdbcUrl(),
      postgres.getUsername(),
      postgres.getPassword()
    );
    customerService.deleteAllCustomers();
  }

  @Test
  void shouldCreateCustomer() {
    customerService.createCustomer(new Customer(1L, "George"));

    Optional<Customer> customer = customerService.getCustomer(1L);
    assertTrue(customer.isPresent());
    assertEquals(1L, customer.get().id());
    assertEquals("George", customer.get().name());
  }

  @Test
  void shouldGetCustomers() {
    customerService.createCustomer(new Customer(1L, "George"));
    customerService.createCustomer(new Customer(2L, "John"));

    List<Customer> customers = customerService.getAllCustomers();
    assertEquals(2, customers.size());
  }
}

Here's what the code does:

• PostgreSQLContainer is declared as a static field. The container starts before all tests and stops after all tests in this class.
• @BeforeAll starts the container, @AfterAll stops it.
• @BeforeEach initializes CustomerService with the container's JDBC parameters and deletes all rows to give each test a clean database.

Key observations:

• Because the container is a static field, it's shared across all test methods in the class. You can declare it as a non-static field and use @BeforeEach/@AfterEach to start a new container per test, but this isn't recommended as it's resource-intensive.
• Even without explicitly stopping the container in @AfterAll, Testcontainers uses the Ryuk container to clean up containers automatically when the JVM exits.

JUnit 5 extension annotations »