Get meta-data from manifest in UnitTest

Issue

I'm currently running into trouble retrieving <meta-data> tags from my AndroidManifest file while being inside an InstrumentationTest.

I am using a library (Sugar ORM) which stores some essential information inside these tags. As soon as I use the library inside the code to be tested I run into problems.

AndroidManifest.xml

<manifest package="org.something" ...>
    ...
    <application ...>
        <meta-data android:name="DATABASE" android:value="foo.db" />
        ...
    </application>
</manifest>

Retrieval of the metadata works like that:

PackageManager pm = context.getPackageManager();
try {
    ApplicationInfo ai = pm.getApplicationInfo(context.getPackageName(), PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);
    value = ai.metaData.getString(name);
} catch (Exception e) {
    Log.d("sugar", "Couldn't find config value: " + name);
}

The test is running as a InstrumentationTestCase and sets up the context to be getInstrumentation().getContext().

Solution

The problem is that InstrumentationTestCase does not contain the meta data from your application. All you need to do is extend ApplicationTestCase<Application> for your test case class.

You can call getContext() in your test cases and that will have the appropriate information in there.

PackageManager pm = getContext().getPackageManager();
ApplicationInfo ai = pm.getApplicationInfo(getContext().getPackageName(), PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);

Answered By - Snikk