Testcontainers and microservices: how to start a second container that the first is trying to call

Question

I'm writing integration tests using Testcontainers in a Spring Boot application. I am testing the user service, which calls the authentication service in order to encode the password when a user is created, and I'm trying to start two containers:

A postgres:17 database

A custom-built auth-service:latest container

The Postgres container starts correctly, executes init.sql, and works perfectly.

However, the auth-service container fails with this error:

Wait strategy failed. Container exited with code 1
Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refusedWaiting for URL: http://localhost:56873/auth/health
...
Timed out waiting for URL to be accessible (http://localhost:56873/auth/health should return HTTP [200])


@SpringBootTest(
        properties = {
                "logging.level.org.springframework.security=DEBUG",
        },
        webEnvironment = SpringBootTest.WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
@Testcontainers
@TestPropertySource(properties = {
        "spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop",
})
class UserControllerIntegrationTests {

    static Network network = Network.newNetwork();

    @Container
    static PostgreSQLContainer<?> postgres = new PostgreSQLContainer<>("postgres:17")
            .withDatabaseName("testdb")
            .withUsername("testuser")
            .withPassword("testpass")
            .withNetwork(network)
            .withNetworkAliases("postgres-db");


    @Container
    static GenericContainer<?> authService = new GenericContainer<>("auth-service:latest")
            .withExposedPorts(8080)
            .withNetwork(network)
            .withNetworkAliases("auth-service")
            .waitingFor(Wait.forHttp("/auth/health")
                    .forStatusCode(200)
                    .withStartupTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(20)));

    static {
        String initScriptPath = "./init.sql";
        try {
            MountableFile.forClasspathResource(initScriptPath);
            System.out.println("✅ Testcontainers: Found init script on classpath: " + initScriptPath);
            postgres.withInitScript(initScriptPath);
        } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
            System.err.println("❌ Testcontainers ERROR: Init script NOT found on classpath: " + initScriptPath);
            throw new RuntimeException("Failed to locate database initialization script.", e);
        }
    }

    @Autowired
    private TestRestTemplate restTemplate;

    @Value("${server.api.key}")
    private String apiKey;

    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepository;

    @Autowired
    private ObjectMapper objectMapper;

    @Autowired
    private TestHelper httpTestHelper;

    @Autowired
    private JwtService jwtService;

    @Autowired
    private JwtAuthFilter jwtAuthFilter;

    @DynamicPropertySource
    static void configureProperties(DynamicPropertyRegistry registry) {
        registry.add("spring.datasource.url", postgres::getJdbcUrl);
        registry.add("spring.datasource.username", postgres::getUsername);
        registry.add("spring.datasource.password", postgres::getPassword);
        registry.add("api.services.auth-service", () ->
                "http://" + authService.getHost() + ":" + authService.getMappedPort(8080));
    }

I would suggest you use the Testcontainers support build into Spring Boot. But for now you probably should increase the timeout for the container as it tries to validate the startup but that apparently takes longer then the default timeout. — M. Deinum
– M. Deinum, Commented Jun 17 at 13:31

Sercan Noyan Germiyanoğlu · Accepted Answer · 2025-06-17 17:39:22Z

0

I'm not sure if it can help you fix your issue but I want to share with you.

Here are the steps you should follow step by step

1 ) Define Second Postgres container

2 ) Env-vars for Auth-Service pointing at that DB

3 ) Shared Network and withNetworkAliases

4 ) Increased health‐check timeout & validated path

5 ) Log dump in @BeforeAll

6 ) Dynamic property source unchanged except for adding the mapped Auth URL

Here is the full code shown below

@SpringBootTest(
    webEnvironment = SpringBootTest.WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT,
    properties = {
        "logging.level.org.springframework.security=DEBUG"
    }
)
@Testcontainers
@TestPropertySource(properties = {
    "spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop"
})
public class UserControllerIntegrationTests {

    // Shared Docker network for containers
    static final Network network = Network.newNetwork();

    // 1) User Service DB
    @Container
    static PostgreSQLContainer<?> userDb = new PostgreSQLContainer<>("postgres:17")
        .withDatabaseName("testdb")
        .withUsername("testuser")
        .withPassword("testpass")
        .withNetwork(network)
        .withNetworkAliases("postgres-db")
        .withInitScript("init.sql");

    // 2) Auth Service DB
    @Container
    static PostgreSQLContainer<?> authDb = new PostgreSQLContainer<>("postgres:17")
        .withDatabaseName("authdb")
        .withUsername("authuser")
        .withPassword("authpass")
        .withNetwork(network)
        .withNetworkAliases("auth-db");

    // 3) Auth Service
    @Container
    static GenericContainer<?> authService = new GenericContainer<>("auth-service:latest")
        .withNetwork(network)
        .withNetworkAliases("auth-service")
        .withEnv("SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL", "jdbc:postgresql://auth-db:5432/authdb")
        .withEnv("SPRING_DATASOURCE_USERNAME", "authuser")
        .withEnv("SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD", "authpass")
        .withExposedPorts(8080)
        .waitingFor(Wait.forHttp("/auth/health").forStatusCode(200).withStartupTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(60)));

    @Autowired
    private TestRestTemplate restTemplate;

    @Value("${server.api.key}")
    private String apiKey;

    // Add your repositories, services, helpers as needed
    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepository;

    @Autowired
    private HttpTestHelper httpTestHelper;

    @DynamicPropertySource
    static void configureProperties(DynamicPropertyRegistry registry) {
        registry.add("spring.datasource.url", userDb::getJdbcUrl);
        registry.add("spring.datasource.username", userDb::getUsername);
        registry.add("spring.datasource.password", userDb::getPassword);
        registry.add("api.services.auth-service", () ->
            "http://" + authService.getHost() + ":" + authService.getMappedPort(8080)
        );
    }

    @BeforeAll
    static void dumpAuthLogs() {
        System.out.println("=== AUTH SERVICE LOGS ===");
        System.out.println(authService.getLogs());
    }

    @Test
    void testCreateUserEncodedPassword() {
        // Your test implementation here
    }
}

answered Jun 17 at 17:39

Sercan Noyan Germiyanoğlu

2,9185 gold badges58 silver badges129 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

Razvan Anghel Jun 18 at 11:58

Thanks for your reply. I used your code and encountered an issue where the test tries to pull the images from dockerhub, although I have the images up, in my Docker Desktop. Do you know what goes wrong here?

Sercan Noyan Germiyanoğlu Jun 18 at 14:37

@RazvanAnghel I'm sorry I have no idea about it.

Razvan Anghel Jun 23 at 11:22

it turns out there was a naming mismatch between my local docker container and the container name in the test. Now it is fixed and your solution works. Many thanks!

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Testcontainers and microservices: how to start a second container that the first is trying to call

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related