How do I assert my exception message with JUnit Test annotation?

You could use the @Rule annotation with ExpectedException, like this:

@Rule
public ExpectedException expectedEx = ExpectedException.none();

@Test
public void shouldThrowRuntimeExceptionWhenEmployeeIDisNull() throws Exception {
    expectedEx.expect(RuntimeException.class);
    expectedEx.expectMessage("Employee ID is null");

    // do something that should throw the exception...
    System.out.println("=======Starting Exception process=======");
    throw new NullPointerException("Employee ID is null");
}

Note that the example in the ExpectedException docs is (currently) wrong - there's no public constructor, so you have to use ExpectedException.none().

In JUnit 4.13 you can do:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThrows;

...

@Test
void exceptionTesting() {
  IllegalArgumentException exception = assertThrows(
    IllegalArgumentException.class, 
    () -> { throw new IllegalArgumentException("a message"); }
  );

  assertEquals("a message", exception.getMessage());
}

This also works in JUnit 5 but with different imports:

import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals;
import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertThrows;

...

I like the @Rule answer. However, if for some reason you don't want to use rules. There is a third option.

@Test (expected = RuntimeException.class)
public void myTestMethod()
{
   try
   {
      //Run exception throwing operation here
   }
   catch(RuntimeException re)
   {
      String message = "Employee ID is null";
      assertEquals(message, re.getMessage());
      throw re;
    }
    fail("Employee Id Null exception did not throw!");
  }

Do you have to use @Test(expected=SomeException.class)? When we have to assert the actual message of the exception, this is what we do.

@Test
public void myTestMethod()
{
  try
  {
    final Integer employeeId = null;
    new Employee(employeeId);
    fail("Should have thrown SomeException but did not!");
  }
  catch( final SomeException e )
  {
    final String msg = "Employee ID is null";
    assertEquals(msg, e.getMessage());
  }
}

Actually, the best usage is with try/catch. Why? Because you can control the place where you expect the exception.

Consider this example:

@Test (expected = RuntimeException.class)
public void someTest() {
   // test preparation
   // actual test
}

What if one day the code is modified and test preparation will throw a RuntimeException? In that case actual test is not even tested and even if it doesn't throw any exception the test will pass.

That is why it is much better to use try/catch than to rely on the annotation.

Raystorm had a good answer. I'm not a big fan of Rules either. I do something similar, except that I create the following utility class to help readability and usability, which is one of the big plus'es of annotations in the first place.

Add this utility class:

import org.junit.Assert;

public abstract class ExpectedRuntimeExceptionAsserter {

    private String expectedExceptionMessage;

    public ExpectedRuntimeExceptionAsserter(String expectedExceptionMessage) {
        this.expectedExceptionMessage = expectedExceptionMessage;
    }

    public final void run(){
        try{
            expectException();
            Assert.fail(String.format("Expected a RuntimeException '%s'", expectedExceptionMessage));
        } catch (RuntimeException e){
            Assert.assertEquals("RuntimeException caught, but unexpected message", expectedExceptionMessage, e.getMessage());
        }
    }

    protected abstract void expectException();

}

Then for my unit test, all I need is this code:

@Test
public void verifyAnonymousUserCantAccessPrivilegedResourceTest(){
    new ExpectedRuntimeExceptionAsserter("anonymous user can't access privileged resource"){
        @Override
        protected void expectException() {
            throw new RuntimeException("anonymous user can't access privileged resource");
        }
    }.run(); //passes test; expected exception is caught, and this @Test returns normally as "Passed"
}

I never liked the way of asserting exceptions with Junit. If I use the "expected" in the annotation, seems from my point of view we're violating the "given, when, then" pattern because the "then" is placed at the top of the test definition.

Also, if we use "@Rule", we have to deal with so much boilerplate code. So, if you can install new libraries for your tests, I'd suggest to have a look to the AssertJ (that library now comes with SpringBoot)

Then a test which is not violating the "given/when/then" principles, and it is done using AssertJ to verify:

1 - The exception is what we're expecting. 2 - It has also an expected message

Will look like this:

 @Test
void should_throwIllegalUse_when_idNotGiven() {

    //when
    final Throwable raisedException = catchThrowable(() -> getUserDAO.byId(null));

    //then
    assertThat(raisedException).isInstanceOf(IllegalArgumentException.class)
            .hasMessageContaining("Id to fetch is mandatory");
}

If using @Rule, the exception set is applied to all the test methods in the Test class.

I would prefer AssertJ for this.

        assertThatExceptionOfType(ExpectedException.class)
        .isThrownBy(() -> {
            // method call
        }).withMessage("My message");

I like user64141's answer but found that it could be more generalized. Here's my take:

public abstract class ExpectedThrowableAsserter implements Runnable {

    private final Class<? extends Throwable> throwableClass;
    private final String expectedExceptionMessage;

    protected ExpectedThrowableAsserter(Class<? extends Throwable> throwableClass, String expectedExceptionMessage) {
        this.throwableClass = throwableClass;
        this.expectedExceptionMessage = expectedExceptionMessage;
    }

    public final void run() {
        try {
            expectException();
        } catch (Throwable e) {
            assertTrue(String.format("Caught unexpected %s", e.getClass().getSimpleName()), throwableClass.isInstance(e));
            assertEquals(String.format("%s caught, but unexpected message", throwableClass.getSimpleName()), expectedExceptionMessage, e.getMessage());
            return;
        }
        fail(String.format("Expected %s, but no exception was thrown.", throwableClass.getSimpleName()));
    }

    protected abstract void expectException();

}

Note that leaving the "fail" statement within the try block causes the related assertion exception to be caught; using return within the catch statement prevents this.

Import the catch-exception library, and use that. It's much cleaner than the ExpectedException rule or a try-catch.

Example form their docs:

import static com.googlecode.catchexception.CatchException.*;
import static com.googlecode.catchexception.apis.CatchExceptionHamcrestMatchers.*;

// given: an empty list
List myList = new ArrayList();

// when: we try to get the first element of the list
catchException(myList).get(1);

// then: we expect an IndexOutOfBoundsException with message "Index: 1, Size: 0"
assertThat(caughtException(),
  allOf(
    instanceOf(IndexOutOfBoundsException.class),
    hasMessage("Index: 1, Size: 0"),
    hasNoCause()
  )
);

@Test (expectedExceptions = ValidationException.class, expectedExceptionsMessageRegExp = "This is not allowed")
public void testInvalidValidation() throws Exception{
     //test code
}