How to unit test JSON parsing

Question

I'm working on an Android app in which I download JSON data from a web service. The class parsing the data looks something like this:

public class JsonCourseParser implements CourseParser {

    public Course parseCourse(String courseData) {
        Course result;

        try {
            JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(courseData);

            ...

            result = new Course("foo", "bar");
        } catch (JSONException e) {
            result = null;
        }

        return result;
    }
}

This builds just fine and it works when I call parseCourse() from within my app, but when I try to test this method in a unit test I get this exception:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/json/JSONException
    at JsonCourseParserTest.initClass(JsonCourseParserTest.java:15)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod$1.runReflectiveCall(FrameworkMethod.java:44)
    at org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:15)
    at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod.invokeExplosively(FrameworkMethod.java:41)
    at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunBefores.evaluate(RunBefores.java:27)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.run(ParentRunner.java:236)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit4.runner.JUnit4TestReference.run(JUnit4TestReference.java:49)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.TestExecution.run(TestExecution.java:38)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:467)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:683)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:390)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:197)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.json.JSONException
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)
    ... 16 more

It seems that the classes of the org.json package which come with the Android Framework are not available in Java by default.

Is there a way I can fix this so I can unit test the classes which parse JSON?

How to unit test JSON parsing

5 Answers