Automating Thymeleaf UI Rendering Tests in Spring Boot Using Selenium

In this article, we'll walk through setting up an automated UI test that:

- Reads article data from a database
- Visits corresponding article pages
- Verifies if the Thymeleaf template renders expected content correctly

We'll use Spring Boot, Selenium and WebDriverManager to build this system.

Use Case

Our application stores articles in a database. Each article has a:

- Title
- Slug (used in the URL)
- Content

We want to automatically test whether each article is:

- Reachable at /articles/{slug}
- Displays the correct title and content

Project Setup

Set up a Spring Boot project using Spring Initializr with Web, JPA, Thymeleaf, and H2 dependencies, then add Selenium and WebDriverManager for automated UI testing.

Maven Dependencies: pom.xml

Define the Entity — Article.java

ArticleRepository.java

ArticleController.java — Thymeleaf-backed UI

article.html — Thymeleaf Template

error.html — Thymeleaf Template

ArticleUiTest.java — Selenium-based UI test

- App starts via @SpringBootTest
- H2 DB loads article from data.sql
- Test hits /articles/slug using ChromeDriver
- Selenium checks page title and content are correct

Enable schema auto-generation in application.properties

Create data.sql in src/main/resources/

To insert article data into H2 in-memory database automatically when your Spring Boot app starts, simply create a file named data.sql inside src/main/resources.

H2 Console URL

You can access the H2 Console (a web UI to view the in-memory database) by visiting this URL (http://localhost:8080/h2-console) in your browser while your Spring Boot app is running.

Test Article Pages in Browser (Manual Test)

Visit http://localhost:8080/articles/spring-boot-testing

You should see:

Repeat for other slugs like: /articles/thymeleaf-basics

Automatically Test Using Selenium (UI Automation Test)

Right-click "ArticleUiTest.java → Run", or use "./mvnw test" in the console to run the test.

Comment out options.addArguments("--headless=new"); to see the browser live during the test.