Missing AutoConfigureWebTestClient in "Testing with a running server"

[wilkinsona]

From @amirensit on Gitter:

Hello
In the example of this section of spring boot testing documentation, Is there a missing @AutoConfigureWebTestClientor Am I wrong ?

It looks to me like it is missing. Removing it from WebTestClientSpringBootTestIntegrationTests causes the tests to fail at any rate. I wonder if the subsequent TestRestTemplate example is also missing something.

[snicoll]

It's a bit more complicated than that. @AutoConfigureWebTestClient is required only if the integration test is not running a web server. When it does, both a WebTestClient and TestRestTemplate are contributed, via a ContextCustomizerFactory. So, from that perspective, the annotation there is not required.

[bclozel]

I'm currently looking into #23067 - I'm commenting here first to make sure that I fully understand the current situation and that this new feature will keep things consistent.

Here's my current understanding:

Annotations on Test class	Server	Web Test Beans configured
@SpringBootTest	Mock
@SpringBootTest @AutoConfigureMockMvc	Mock	MockMvc, MockMvcWebTestClient*
@SpringBootTest @AutoConfigureWebTestClient	Mock	WebTestClient
@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)	Running	WebTestClient, TestRestTemplate

With #23067, I'm thinking about adding a MockMvcWebTestClient bean to the context (see second line in the table) if the right dependencies are available. Are we considering here documentation updates only? The situation evolved a lot since the introduction of @SpringBootTest so we can reconsider a few choices still for future versions.

[snicoll]

I am wondering what would be the harm of configuring things in the first case when a web environment is detected? It feels a bit odd that we do it when a RANDOM_PORT or DEFINED_PORT web environment is specified, but not when the default MOCK applies...

[mbhave]

I'm not sure what we need to document here. @AutoconfigureWebTestClient is not required when running with a real server. For the mock case, it is already present in the documentation.

However, I think the documentation for 2.5.x is misleading because this section doesn't seem to clarify that @AutoconfigureWebTestClient is for WebFlux applications only.