ElasticSearch Integration Testing with ElasticSearch Inside

Integration Testing can be quite cumbersome, especially when you have a lot of moving parts involved. To test my ElasticSearch code I was used to spin up a docker instance and discard it after the tests ran.

Recently I changed my approach after receiving the following tip from a colleague(thanks Jasper!): https://github.com/poulfoged/elasticsearch-inside 

ElasticSearch Inside is  a fully embedded version of Elasticsearch for integration tests. When the instance is created both the JVM and Elasticsearch itself is extracted to a temporary location and started. Once disposed everything is removed again. And despite what you may think, this happens really fast(a few seconds on my machine).

How to

• Install the Nuget package:

Install-Package elasticsearch-inside

• After that you have to create a new instance of the ElasticSearch class and wait for the Ready() method.

using (var elasticsearch = new Elasticsearch())
{
    await elasticsearch.Ready();
}

• Now you can call the ElasticSearch instance using NEST:

using (var elasticsearch = new Elasticsearch())
{
    await elasticsearch.Ready();
    var client = new ElasticClient(new ConnectionSettings(elasticsearch.Url));

    var result = client.Ping();
}