Add test for "forward:..."

[dsyer]

There is a test for a controller that uses "redirect:..." views but none for "forward:..." (and it seems to be non-obvious how to get the mock request dispatcher to dispatch back to the main servlet).

[rstoyanchev]

Something like this?

        this.mockMvc.perform(get("/"))
            .andExpect(status().isOk())
            .andExpect(forwardedUrl("/WEB-INF/layouts/standardLayout.jsp"));

[dsyer]

That would be good. I also want to test the actual output from the forwarded resource (it's an API and the rest-docs should contain the proper response). Is there a way to do that? I think you showed me how to do once but I must have lost the knack.

[rstoyanchev]

At the moment we only have an explicit option for async dispatches. Should probably add one for FORWARD and ERROR dispatches. Take a look at how MockMvcRequestBuilders#asyncDispatch is done.

[dsyer]

Something like this?

    public static RequestBuilder forward(MvcResult result) {
        return new RequestBuilder() {

            @Override
            public MockHttpServletRequest buildRequest(
                    ServletContext servletContext) {
                MockHttpServletRequest request = result.getRequest();
                request.setRequestURI(result.getResponse().getForwardedUrl());
                return request;

            }

        };
    }

and then

    @Test
    public void getLocations() throws Exception {
        final MvcResult result = this.mockMvc
                .perform(MockMvcRequestBuilders.get("/")).andReturn();
        this.mockMvc.perform(forward(result))
            .andExpect(...);
    }

It seems clunky to me, and I'm not sure I care too much about shaving this yak. Would it not be possible to build this into the perform() method? E.g. as a global option:

    @Test
    public void getLocations() throws Exception {
        this.mockMvc.followForwards(true);
        this.mockMvc
                .perform(MockMvcRequestBuilders.get("/")).andExpect(...);
    }

[dsyer]

Also, although the test passes, it doesn't work with restdocs (no snippets created). Cc @wilkinsona.

UPDATE: cancel that, it works fine with restdocs. It's just the yak shaving that I would like to fix.

[rstoyanchev]

Yes, we probably could do some such option. It wouldn't work well with JSP but apart from that yes.

[OrangeDog]

MockMvc is supposed to be immutable, so that API wouldn't really work.
Perhaps .andPerformForward() returning a new ResultActions, if that's possible.

mockMvc.perform(get("/one"))
        .andExpect(status().isOk())
        .andExpect(forwardedUrl("/two"))
        .andPerformForward()
        .andExpect(content().string(...))

Or on the original builder somehow

mockMvc.perform(get("/one").with(followForwards()))

I see a ForwardRequestPostProcessor but that needs to know the forwarded URL on construction.