Cannot find class in classpath when trying to run TestNG from the main method

Question

I run my Selenium Testng tests using Maven, but I am trying to create executable jars, so other team members can simply run an automation suite from their desktop with minimal setup.

So I have added a main "runner" method to create an executable jar.

public class LaunchTests {

public static void main(String[] args) {
    TestListenerAdapter tla = new TestListenerAdapter();
    TestNG testng = new TestNG();
    List<String> suites = new ArrayList();
    suites.add("testng.xml");//path to xml..
    testng.setTestSuites(suites);
    testng.run();

}

}

My best guess is that something needs to be added to the POM.xml?

When running the testng tests manually from eclipse, or with mvn clean test (Surefire plugin), they run flawlessly. But I get this error when trying to run as a Java program.

    Exception in thread "main" org.testng.TestNGException: 
Cannot find class in classpath: package.TestOne
    at org.testng.xml.XmlClass.loadClass(XmlClass.java:81)
    at org.testng.xml.XmlClass.init(XmlClass.java:73)
    at org.testng.xml.XmlClass.<init>(XmlClass.java:59)
    at org.testng.xml.TestNGContentHandler.startElement(TestNGContentHandler.java:548)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.startElement(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractXMLDocumentParser.emptyElement(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.dtd.XMLDTDValidator.emptyElement(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDriver.next(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
    at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.testng.xml.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:38)
    at org.testng.xml.SuiteXmlParser.parse(SuiteXmlParser.java:16)
    at org.testng.xml.SuiteXmlParser.parse(SuiteXmlParser.java:9)
    at org.testng.xml.Parser.parse(Parser.java:172)
    at org.testng.TestNG.initializeSuitesAndJarFile(TestNG.java:302)
    at org.testng.TestNG.run(TestNG.java:991)
    at util.LaunchTests.main(LaunchTests.java:17)

Testng.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE suite SYSTEM "http://testng.org/testng-1.0.dtd">
<suite name="Suite1" parallel="methods" thread-count="1">

    <test name="Chrome Adviser Portal" allow-return-values="true"
        thread-count="1">
        <parameters>
            <parameter name="browser" value="chrome" />
            <parameter name="loginType" value="adviser" />
        </parameters>
        <classes>
            <class name="adviserPortal.AdviserLogin" />
        </classes>
    </test>
</suite>

Answer 1

I just resolved this for one of our engineers. He had updated to the latest testng plugin, but we resolved the issue by also updating his build path to a testng 6.11 jar file (he had 6.9.6 before).

Answer 2

You mentioned that you are able to run the tests from within eclipse via maven surefire plugin and you are not able to run it only when executing your main method.

This can only happen when you class LaunchTests resides in src/main/java and your suite xml file testng.xml is referring to classes within src/test/java. Java classes within src/main/java donot have visibility into java classes that reside within src/test/java. That explains why TestNG throws the exception Cannot find class in classpath

And if your LaunchTests moves into src/test/java then by default it wont be included in the uber jar (executable jar) that you are building because test classes are omitted.

So if you really want to be able to do this, you have two options

1. Move all your test classes from src/test/java into src/main/java and then work with it (Surefire plugin configuration in your pom file may need some tweaks to let it know that your test sources is not src/test/java but src/main/java.
2. You make use of something like maven jar plugin to create a jar of test classes by referring to here.

Answer 3

Yes, you have to add extra plugins in pom.xml to create a runnable jar .

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>StackOverFlow</groupId>
    <artifactId>StackOverFlow</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <build>
        <sourceDirectory>src</sourceDirectory>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.5.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.8</source>
                    <target>1.8</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <archive>
                        <manifest>
                            <mainClass>com.stack.JarCreation.Main</mainClass>
                        </manifest>
                    </archive>
                    <descriptorRefs>
                        <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                    </descriptorRefs>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>attached</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <phase>package</phase>
                        <configuration>
                            <descriptorRefs>
                                <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                            </descriptorRefs>
                            <archive>
                                <manifest>
                                    <mainClass>com.stack.JarCreation.Main</mainClass>
                                </manifest>
                            </archive>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>

        </plugins>
    </build>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
            <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
            <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
            <version>6.9.13.6</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

Go to your Project =>Right Click => Run As => Maven build... (which has 3 trailing dots) =>In Goals write clean install

It will create two jars in target folder.

The jar which has trailing jar-with-dependencies.jar is the runnable jar.

Place it where your chrome driver is and go to the location of jar and run it , it would work.