Populating Spring @Value during Unit Test

Since Spring 4.1 you could set up property values just in code by using org.springframework.test.context.TestPropertySource annotation on Unit Tests class level. You could use this approach even for injecting properties into dependent bean instances

For example

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = FooTest.Config.class)
@TestPropertySource(properties = {
    "some.bar.value=testValue",
})
public class FooTest {

  @Value("${some.bar.value}")
  String bar;

  @Test
  public void testValueSetup() {
    assertEquals("testValue", bar);
  }


  @Configuration
  static class Config {

    @Bean
    public static PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer propertiesResolver() {
        return new PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer();
    }

  }

}

Note: It's necessary to have instance of org.springframework.context.support.PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer in Spring context

Edit 24-08-2017: If you are using SpringBoot 1.4.0 and later you could initialize tests with @SpringBootTest and @SpringBootConfiguration annotations. More info here

In case of SpringBoot we have following code

@SpringBootTest
@SpringBootConfiguration
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@TestPropertySource(properties = {
    "some.bar.value=testValue",
})
public class FooTest {

  @Value("${some.bar.value}")
  String bar;

  @Test
  public void testValueSetup() {
    assertEquals("testValue", bar);
  }

}

If possible I would try to write those test without Spring Context. If you create this class in your test without spring, then you have full control over its fields.

To set the @value field you can use Springs ReflectionTestUtils - it has a method setField to set private fields.

@see JavaDoc: ReflectionTestUtils.setField(java.lang.Object, java.lang.String, java.lang.Object)