AssertionFailedEror: Class has no public constructor

If you are consistently getting a red bar and a junit.framework.AssertionFailedError in your Failure trace which looks a little like this:

Class YourTestCase has no public constructor YourTestCase(String name) or YourTestCase()

... then you have a problem with the visibility of your constructor or of the entire class.

Visibility Of The Constructor

Your JUnit Test Case always has to have either a default public constructor:

public class YourtestCase extends TestCase {
	
	public YourtestCase() { }	// if you include no constructors,
					// a default constructor is included implicitly
	
}

Or a public constructor which takes a String as an argument:

public class YourtestCase extends TestCase {
	
	public YourtestCase(String name) { }
	
}

If you don't specify one of these you will get the no public constructor failure described above.

The following is a Fail:

public class YourtestCase extends TestCase {
	
	protected YourtestCase() { }
	YourtestCase(String name) { }
	
	public YourtestCase(Object wtv) { }
	
	// There isn't a constuctor which is both public,
	// and takes either nothing or a String as an argument
	
}

Visibility Of The Class

The other problem could be with the visibility of the entire class. *Note the presence of the word public before the keyword class in the following:

public class YourtestCase extends TestCase {
	
	// ...
	
}

If you neglect it, your class doesn't have public visibility and JUnit cannot use it as a Test Case:

The following is a Fail:

class YourtestCase extends TestCase {
	// This class doesn't have public visibility!
	
	public YourtestCase(String name) { }
	
}