java - Testing a JAX-RS Web Service?

Question

I'm currently looking for ways to create automated tests for a JAX-RS (Java API for RESTful Web Services) based web service.

I basically need a way to send it certain inputs and verify that I get the expected responses. I'd prefer to do this via JUnit, but I'm not sure how that can be achieved.

What approach do you use to test your web-services?

Update: As entzik pointed out, decoupling the web service from the business logic allows me to unit test the business logic. However, I also want to test for the correct HTTP status codes etc.

Answer 1

Jersey comes with a great RESTful client API that makes writing unit tests really easy. See the unit tests in the examples that ship with Jersey. We use this approach to test the REST support in Apache Camel, if you are interested the test cases are here