Bootstrapping the TestContext Framework
The default configuration for the internals of the Spring TestContext Framework is
sufficient for all common use cases. However, there are times when a development team or
third party framework would like to change the default ContextLoader, implement a
custom TestContext or ContextCache, augment the default sets of
ContextCustomizerFactory and TestExecutionListener implementations, and so on. For
such low-level control over how the TestContext framework operates, Spring provides a
bootstrapping strategy.
TestContextBootstrapper defines the SPI for bootstrapping the TestContext framework. A
TestContextBootstrapper is used by the TestContextManager to load the
TestExecutionListener implementations for the current test and to build the
TestContext that it manages. You can configure a custom bootstrapping strategy for a
test class (or test class hierarchy) by using @BootstrapWith, either directly or as a
meta-annotation. If a bootstrapper is not explicitly configured by using
@BootstrapWith, either the DefaultTestContextBootstrapper or the
WebTestContextBootstrapper is used, depending on the presence of @WebAppConfiguration.
Since the TestContextBootstrapper SPI is likely to change in the future (to accommodate
new requirements), we strongly encourage implementers not to implement this interface
directly but rather to extend AbstractTestContextBootstrapper or one of its concrete
subclasses instead.