Javadoc in JUnit test classes?

Question

I use Javadoc in my testing a lot.
But it only gets really useful when you add your own tag to your javadoc.

The main objective here is to make the test understandable for other developers contributing to your project. And for that we don’t even need to generate the actual javadoc.

/**
 * Create a valid account.
 * @result Account will be persisted without any errors,
 *         and Account.getId() will no longer be <code>null</code>
 */
@Test
public void createValidAccount() {
    accountService.create(account);
    assertNotNull(account.getId());
}

Next we’ll need to notify our Javadoc plugin in maven that we added a new tag.

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.8</version>
            <configuration>
                <tags>
                    <tag>
                        <name>result</name>
                        <placement>a</placement>
                        <head>Test assertion :</head>
                    </tag>
                </tags>
            </configuration>             
        </plugin>    
    </plugins>        
</build>

And now all that is left to do is call our maven plugin.

javadoc:test-javadoc (or javadoc:test-aggregate for multi-module projects)

This is a fairly easy example, but when running more complex tests, it is impossible to describe the tests by simply using a self-descriptive method name.

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