Awesome AssertJ: Check String Starts Or Ends With A Given Value

Writing assertions using the nice fluent API of AssertJ is a joy. Besides some of the basic assertions like isEqualTo AssertJ also has specific assertions for specific types. For example if we want write an assertion to check if a String value starts or ends with an expected value we can use the startsWith(String) or endsWith(String) methods. If we don’t care that a character is upper or lower case we can also use startsWithIgnoringCase(String) or endsWithIgnoringCase(String). Each of the methods also has a counterpart method to check the String value doesn’t start or end with an expected value. For example we can use doesNotStartWith(String) to assert a value does not start with the expected value.

Instead of using the specific startsWith…​(String) or endsWith…​(String) methods we can also use the more generic matches method. Now we need to specify a Pattern or Predicate that matches our requirement. This give some more flexbility but is also more verbose. To test there is not a match we can use the doesNotMatch method.

In the following example we write assertions to check if a String value starts with an expected value:

package mrhaki;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

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

class StringStartsWith {

    @Test
    void testStringStartsWith() {
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").startsWith("Awesome");

        // We can also check ignoring the casing of the String value.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").startsWithIgnoringCase("aweSome");
    }

    @Test
    void testStringDoesNotStartWith() {
        // Or we check a String value doesn't start with an expected value.
        assertThat("Amazing Assertj").doesNotStartWith("Awesome");

        // We can also check ignoring the casing of the String value.
        assertThat("Amazing Assertj").doesNotStartWithIgnoringCase("aweSome");
    }

    @Test
    void testStringStartsWithRegex() {
        // We can use regular expressions as well, but it is more verbose.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(Pattern.compile("^Awesome.*"));

        // Also here we can ignore casing.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(Pattern.compile("^awesome.*", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE));

        // And check String value doesn't start with expected value.
        assertThat("Amazing AssertJ").doesNotMatch(Pattern.compile("^Awesome.*"));
    }

    @Test
    void testStringStartsWithPredicate() {
        // We can use a Predicate as well, but it is more verbose.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(s -> s.startsWith("Awesome"));

        // We are more flexible as we can use for example specify an offset.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(s -> s.startsWith("some", 3));

        // If we want to ignore casing we have to first convert our value.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(s -> s.toLowerCase().startsWith("awesome"));

        // And check String value doesn't start with expected value.
        assertThat("Amazing AssertJ").matches(s -> !s.startsWith("Awesome"));
    }
}

And in the next example we write assertions to check if a String value ends with an expected value:

package mrhaki;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

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

class StringEndsWith {

    @Test
    void testStringEndsWith() {
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").endsWith("AssertJ");

        // We can also check ignoring the casing of the String value.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").endsWithIgnoringCase("assertJ");
    }

    @Test
    void testStringDoesNotEndWith() {
        // Or we we check our String values doesn't end with an expected value.
        assertThat("Awesome Asciidoc").doesNotEndWith("AssertJ");

        // We can also check ignoring the casing of the String value.
        assertThat("Awesome Asciidoc").doesNotEndWithIgnoringCase("assertJ");
    }

    @Test
    void testStringEndsWithRegex() {
        // We can use regular expressions as well, but it is more verbose.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(Pattern.compile(".*AssertJ$"));

        // Also here we can ignore casing.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(Pattern.compile(".*AssertJ$", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE));

        // And check String value doesn't end with expected value.
        assertThat("Amazing Asciidoc").doesNotMatch(Pattern.compile(".*AssertJ$"));
    }

    @Test
    void testStringEndsWithPredicate() {
        // We can use a Predicate as well, but it is more verbose.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(s -> s.endsWith("AssertJ"));

        // If we want to ignore casing we have to first convert our value.
        assertThat("Awesome AssertJ").matches(s -> s.toLowerCase().endsWith("assertj"));

        // And check String value doesn't end with expected value.
        assertThat("Awesome Asciidoc").matches(s -> !s.endsWith("AssertJ"));
    }
}

Written with AssertJ 3.24.2.