JUnit test for System.out.println()

using ByteArrayOutputStream and System.setXXX is simple:

private final ByteArrayOutputStream outContent = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
private final ByteArrayOutputStream errContent = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
private final PrintStream originalOut = System.out;
private final PrintStream originalErr = System.err;

@Before
public void setUpStreams() {
    System.setOut(new PrintStream(outContent));
    System.setErr(new PrintStream(errContent));
}

@After
public void restoreStreams() {
    System.setOut(originalOut);
    System.setErr(originalErr);
}

sample test cases:

@Test
public void out() {
    System.out.print("hello");
    assertEquals("hello", outContent.toString());
}

@Test
public void err() {
    System.err.print("hello again");
    assertEquals("hello again", errContent.toString());
}

I used this code to test the command line option (asserting that -version outputs the version string, etc etc)

Edit: Prior versions of this answer called System.setOut(null) after the tests; This is the cause of NullPointerExceptions commenters refer to.

You can set the System.out print stream via setOut() (and for in and err). Can you redirect this to a print stream that records to a string, and then inspect that ? That would appear to be the simplest mechanism.

(I would advocate, at some stage, convert the app to some logging framework - but I suspect you already are aware of this!)

Based on @dfa's answer and another answer that shows how to test System.in, I would like to share my solution to give an input to a program and test its output.

As a reference, I use JUnit 4.12.

Let's say we have this program that simply replicates input to output:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class SimpleProgram {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
        System.out.print(scanner.next());
        scanner.close();
    }
}

To test it, we can use the following class:

import static org.junit.Assert.*;

import java.io.*;

import org.junit.*;

public class SimpleProgramTest {
    private final InputStream systemIn = System.in;
    private final PrintStream systemOut = System.out;

    private ByteArrayInputStream testIn;
    private ByteArrayOutputStream testOut;

    @Before
    public void setUpOutput() {
        testOut = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        System.setOut(new PrintStream(testOut));
    }

    private void provideInput(String data) {
        testIn = new ByteArrayInputStream(data.getBytes());
        System.setIn(testIn);
    }

    private String getOutput() {
        return testOut.toString();
    }

    @After
    public void restoreSystemInputOutput() {
        System.setIn(systemIn);
        System.setOut(systemOut);
    }

    @Test
    public void testCase1() {
        final String testString = "Hello!";
        provideInput(testString);

        SimpleProgram.main(new String[0]);

        assertEquals(testString, getOutput());
    }
}

I won't explain much, because I believe the code is readable and I cited my sources.

When JUnit runs testCase1(), it is going to call the helper methods in the order they appear:

1. setUpOutput(), because of the @Before annotation
2. provideInput(String data), called from testCase1()
3. getOutput(), called from testCase1()
4. restoreSystemInputOutput(), because of the @After annotation

I didn't test System.err because I didn't need it, but it should be easy to implement, similar to testing System.out.

Full JUnit 5 example to test System.out (replace the when part):

package learning;

import static org.assertj.core.api.BDDAssertions.then;

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.PrintStream;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.AfterEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

class SystemOutLT {

    private PrintStream originalSystemOut;
    private ByteArrayOutputStream systemOutContent;

    @BeforeEach
    void redirectSystemOutStream() {

        originalSystemOut = System.out;

        // given
        systemOutContent = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        System.setOut(new PrintStream(systemOutContent));
    }

    @AfterEach
    void restoreSystemOutStream() {
        System.setOut(originalSystemOut);
    }

    @Test
    void shouldPrintToSystemOut() {

        // when
        System.out.println("example");

        then(systemOutContent.toString()).containsIgnoringCase("example");
    }
}

If the function is printing to System.out, you can capture that output by using the System.setOut method to change System.out to go to a PrintStream provided by you. If you create a PrintStream connected to a ByteArrayOutputStream, then you can capture the output as a String.

// Create a stream to hold the output
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
PrintStream ps = new PrintStream(baos);
// IMPORTANT: Save the old System.out!
PrintStream old = System.out;
// Tell Java to use your special stream
System.setOut(ps);
// Print some output: goes to your special stream
System.out.println("Foofoofoo!");
// Put things back
System.out.flush();
System.setOut(old);
// Show what happened
System.out.println("Here: " + baos.toString());

Although this question is very old and has already very good answers I want to provide an alternative. I liked the answer of dfa however I wanted to have something reusable in different projects without copying the configuration and so I created a library out of it and wanted to contribute back to the community. It is called Console Captor and you can add it with the following snippet:

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.hakky54</groupId>
    <artifactId>consolecaptor</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Example class

public class FooService {

    public void sayHello() {
        System.out.println("Keyboard not responding. Press any key to continue...");
        System.err.println("Congratulations, you are pregnant!");
    }

}

Unit test

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;

import nl.altindag.console.ConsoleCaptor;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

public class FooServiceTest {

    @Test
    public void captureStandardAndErrorOutput() {
        ConsoleCaptor consoleCaptor = new ConsoleCaptor();

        FooService fooService = new FooService();
        fooService.sayHello();

        assertThat(consoleCaptor.getStandardOutput()).contains("Keyboard not responding. Press any key to continue...");
        assertThat(consoleCaptor.getErrorOutput()).contains("Congratulations, you are pregnant!");
        
        consoleCaptor.close();
    }
}