zeebeTestEngine.increaseTime not working reliably for Spring Boot Tests

[tobiasschaefer]

Describe the bug

I have a process test whose process includes an timer intermediate catch event with a duration of 15 minutes. Obviously, I don’t want the test to wait but want be be able to trigger the timer (or rather increase the time of the environment so that it fires).

Here is a nice working example which works: TimerTest.java 1

However, this previous example uses @ZeebeProcessTest and in my case I have
@SpringBootTest @ZeebeSpringTest and it doesn’t work reliably.

To reproduce the issue I created a fork of the Camunda 8 Twitter Example: twitter-with-timer 2 in which I

• added a timer with a duration in the process model
• added the same skipTimer implementation.
• disabled all tests but the first (to make it simpler)
• I replaced @Test with @RepeatedTest(10) to make the error more obvious and reproducible.

However, this test

• sometimes fails on the first zeebeTestEngine.waitForIdleState(DEFAULT)
• sometimes on the last zeebeTestEngine.waitForIdleState(DEFAULT)
• sometimes it succeeds.

See also discussion in the forum thread #50258

Expected behavior

Test should pass every time.

Log/Stacktrace

Repetition 1: failed on “zeebeTestEngine.waitForIdleState(DEFAULT);” (first line in method skipTimeout) with a timeout

Repetition 2: failed a few lines later on
“zeebeTestEngine.waitForIdleState(DEFAULT);” (last (!) line in method skipTimeout) with a timeout

Repetition 4 failed with “Mockito.verify(twitterService).tweet(“Hello world”);”

On the second invocation all 10 were successful:

On further invocations I get random results similar to the first and second invocation.

Note that the duration is quite different. I don’t know much about Zeebe internals but is there some configuration which can be set to make the timers being checked more often?

Environment:

• OS: Windows
• Deployment: none - its a local test with @ZeebeSpringTest, i.e. it uses the embedded process engine
• Spring-Zeebe Version: 8.3.1
• SpringBoot Version: 3.1.5
• Configuration: n.A.

[rshamborovskyy]

Same problem here. @ZeebeSpringTest with timer event and increaseTime passes randomly.
Would really like to have this one sorted out. Meanwhile I need to think about some workaround.

[tobiasschaefer]

Hi @jonathanlukas ,

this issue still affects us and Roman has the same issue. Since you were involved in the forum discussion before I created this issue and know who could support internally at Camunda:

Could you please get someone involved in this ticket so it gets fixed?

Best,
Tobias

[jonathanlukas]

@tobiasschaefer I investigated the problem today and had some findings. I am currently checking with the zeebe team.

[jonathanlukas]

@tobiasschaefer I just prepared a fixed version of the timer testing with additional working spring zeebe tests:

camunda-community-hub/camunda-8-examples#376

[tobiasschaefer]

Hi @jonathanlukas ,

thanks a lot! 💯

It's now working for me too 👍

[jonathanlukas]

Awesome! Now I just need to add something to the testing docs so that other people will not face the same issue. Do you have a proposal for that?

In detail, the problem is that waitForBusyState is also triggered by job activation.