Hamcrest compare collections

If you want to assert that the two lists are identical, don't complicate things with Hamcrest:

assertEquals(expectedList, actual.getList());

If you really intend to perform an order-insensitive comparison, you can call the containsInAnyOrder varargs method and provide values directly:

assertThat(actual.getList(), containsInAnyOrder("item1", "item2"));

(Assuming that your list is of String, rather than Agent, for this example.)

If you really want to call that same method with the contents of a List:

assertThat(actual.getList(), containsInAnyOrder(expectedList.toArray(new String[expectedList.size()]));

Without this, you're calling the method with a single argument and creating a Matcher that expects to match an Iterable where each element is a List. This can't be used to match a List.

That is, you can't match a List<Agent> with a Matcher<Iterable<List<Agent>>, which is what your code is attempting.

List<Long> actual = Arrays.asList(1L, 2L);
List<Long> expected = Arrays.asList(2L, 1L);
assertThat(actual, containsInAnyOrder(expected.toArray()));

Shorter version of @Joe's answer without redundant parameters.

To complement @Joe's answer:

Hamcrest provides you with three main methods to match a list:

contains Checks for matching all the elements taking in count the order, if the list has more or less elements, it will fail

containsInAnyOrder Checks for matching all the elements and it doesn't matter the order, if the list has more or less elements, will fail

hasItems Checks just for the specified objects it doesn't matter if the list has more

hasItem Checks just for one object it doesn't matter if the list has more

All of them can receive a list of objects and use equals method for comparation or can be mixed with other matchers like @borjab mentioned:

assertThat(myList , contains(allOf(hasProperty("id", is(7L)), 
                                   hasProperty("name", is("testName1")),
                                   hasProperty("description", is("testDesc1"))),
                             allOf(hasProperty("id", is(11L)), 
                                   hasProperty("name", is("testName2")),
                                   hasProperty("description", is("testDesc2")))));

http://hamcrest.org/JavaHamcrest/javadoc/1.3/org/hamcrest/Matchers.html#contains(E...) http://hamcrest.org/JavaHamcrest/javadoc/1.3/org/hamcrest/Matchers.html#containsInAnyOrder(java.util.Collection) http://hamcrest.org/JavaHamcrest/javadoc/1.3/org/hamcrest/Matchers.html#hasItems(T...)

With existing Hamcrest libraries (as of v.2.0.0.0) you are forced to use Collection.toArray() method on your Collection in order to use containsInAnyOrder Matcher. Far nicer would be to add this as a separate method to org.hamcrest.Matchers:

public static <T> org.hamcrest.Matcher<java.lang.Iterable<? extends T>> containsInAnyOrder(Collection<T> items) {
    return org.hamcrest.collection.IsIterableContainingInAnyOrder.<T>containsInAnyOrder((T[]) items.toArray());
}

Actually I ended up adding this method to my custom test library and use it to increase readability of my test cases (due to less verbosity).

For list of objects you may need something like this:

import static org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.contains;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.allOf;
import static org.hamcrest.beans.HasPropertyWithValue.hasProperty;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.is;

@Test
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public void test_returnsList(){

    arrange();
  
    List<MyBean> myList = act();
    
    assertThat(myList , contains(allOf(hasProperty("id",          is(7L)), 
                                       hasProperty("name",        is("testName1")),
                                       hasProperty("description", is("testDesc1"))),
                                 allOf(hasProperty("id",          is(11L)), 
                                       hasProperty("name",        is("testName2")),
                                       hasProperty("description", is("testDesc2")))));
}

Use containsInAnyOrder if you do not want to check the order of the objects.

P.S. Any help to avoid the warning that is suppresed will be really appreciated.

Make sure that the Objects in your list have equals() defined on them. Then

assertThat(generatedList, is(equalTo(expectedList)));

works.

To compare two lists with the order preserved (strict order) use.

assertThat(actualList, contains("item1","item2"));

If we want to compare without a specific order we can use below command

assertThat(collection, containsInAnyOrder("item1","item2"));