In most cases it is not necessary to test logging, but in some situations you wont to check in a JUnit test that a log statement will be written, e.g in special error cases. When you use logback as logging framework the test can setup a ListAppender for a Logger and can implement a assert method which checks that the expected log statement is in the ListAppender list. But then the test is logback specific and has dependency on logback! When you use this approache in many JUnit test classes the test source has a hard dependency on logback and when you wont to change the logging framework all tests must also be changed. To remove this hard dependency you can use a JUnit rule, which capsulate the logback framework from the test source. The example here shows how a test and such a JUnit rule can look like.
Here the sample test for verify logging:
And here the logback specific rule:
