Working with fitnesse (the ABCs)

Owned by Selvyn Wright
Last updated: Oct 22, 2019
3 min read

Once fitnesse is runing the wiki has al the info you need to run and configure it.  Start fitnesse with the following command

  • java -jar fitnesse-standalone.jar -p 8090

-p 8090 is the port number with wiki will be available on


This is the TDD(Java, C# and VB) home page for your knowledge base space within Confluence. Here you will find code samples, tips n tricks as well as short tutorials.

We outline a series of labs that are all TDD based.  It starts with two duplicate exercises one will be using JUnit the other fitnesse.  The purpose of the duplication is to clearly demonstrate TDD using something like fitnesse.


Creating a wiki page

Start fitnesse with the following command

  1. Java –jar fitnesse-standalone.jar -p 8090
    1. This will start fitnesse on port 8090 on your machine
    2. Using a browser open the fitnesse wiki with localhost:8090
    3. Select Edit (this can be found at the top left of the wiki page)
    4. Examine the page carefully, you will see several line entries as shown here
      1. | [[text visible on wiki][.wikipage]] | ‘ ‘ descriptive text ‘ ‘ | x


  1. If the .wikipage entry refers to a page that doesn’t exist yet, it will be created once you save the current page and click question mark hyperlink the fitnesse wiki has created for you.
  2. Once you create the new wiki page, you can select Edit (top left of the wiki page) and begin to mark it up using the wiki commands
  3. Before a test a can be run from a page, you must enable the test feature of the page
    1. Select Tools/Properties
    2. On this page you will see numerous options, Under Page Type, select Test, then select Save Properties

 Sample fitnesse sript

!contents -R2 -g -p -f -h

!define TEST_SYSTEM {slim}

!path c:\\work\\software\\eclipse_jee\\string-manipulator\\target\\string-manipulator-0.0.1.jar

|import               |
|com.celestial.strings|

|String Concatenator                                   |
|Left Hand String|Right Hand String|Combined String?|
|Hello           |World            |!-HelloWorld-!  |

Sample Fixture

String Contenanter Fixture
package com.celestial.sm;

/**
 *
 * @author Selvyn
 */
public class StringConcatenater
{
    private String lhData;
    private String rhData;
    
    public  void    setLeftHand( String val )
    {
        lhData = val;
    }
    
    public  void    setRightHand( String val )
    {
        rhData = val;
    }
    
    public  String  Output()
    {
        StringConcatenaterImpl impl = new StringConcatenaterImpl();
        return impl.addStrings(lhData, rhData);
    }
}

Sample Implementation

String Concatenater Implementation
package com.celestial.sm;

/**
 *
 * @author Selvyn
 */
public class StringConcatenaterImpl
{
    public  String  addStrings( String lh, String rh ) 
    {
        return lh + rh;
    }
    
}