Spring Office Hours S5E11 - Testing Spring Boot Applications with Daniel Garnier-Moiroux
Mar 30, 2026
Daniel Garnier-Moiroux, a Spring Security engineer and author, talks testing strategies for Spring Boot and his new book. He covers trade-offs of full-context tests, faster TDD-friendly workflows, and using test slices and Modulith for focused testing. They also explore AI-generated tests, when to trust them, and how to keep tests useful as documentation.
AI Snips
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Episode notes
Use TDD For Instant Feedback During Development
- Use TDD to keep a very fast feedback loop when developing so tests run instantly while you iterate.
- Daniel explains TDD as write a failing test, implement the simplest fix, then refactor, running tests multiple times per minute for quick design guidance.
@SpringBootTest Can Inflate Test Suite Time
- Avoid sprinkling @SpringBootTest everywhere because each annotated test starts or reuses cached Spring applications and can bloat your suite.
- Daniel describes the test context cache limits and long entity scans that can add seconds per test and turn suites into 15‑minute runs.
Always Review and Tighten Agent‑Generated Tests
- Use AI agents to generate tests but always review and refine the generated tests as the authoritative specification of intent.
- Daniel recommends focusing review on tests (the ground truth), pruning irrelevant cases, renaming for clarity, and ensuring tests express intent not just code description.
