Gradescope Java Autograder Example

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This example shows how to set up an autograder on Gradescope for a Java project. It uses JUnit, JDK11, and UC Berkeley CS61B's jh61b library for producing output in JSON format.

Warning

This example was provided by an early instructor user of the autograder platform and is not actively maintained. It may not support all current autograder platform functionality. See our Community Resources page for alternative Java resources.

Project Description

This project builds a simple Linked List that stores ints as data values.

Explanation of Dependencies

  • JUnit: Popular Java unit testing framework
  • jh61b: Among other things, this provides annotations for JUnit tests that allows setting point values and names, and a test listener that produces output in JSON format
  • JDK11: jh61b uses String.join() which is added in JDK8. If you need versions <8, you just need to replace this part of the code

Files

setup.sh

Sets up OpenJDK 11.

Note: Installing JDK11 takes a few minutes, so building the image takes a while. We may later provide base images to speed this up.

run_autograder

Copies the student's code to the autograder directory, compiles, and executes it.

One thing to be aware of for Java projects is that you need to copy the student's work to the right place depending on the package. Depending on how you set up the project, students may submit files in the root of their submission or within nested directories for the package they used. Either is fine, you just need to sure that when you're copying the files around you put them in the right place. Your autograder code should know what package to import from, so make sure that you know ahead of time what the student's package is (i.e. tell them what to do or set up a template that has it filled in).

You could also do something like $(find . -name "IntList.java") in your bash script and copy the result of that to the destination, but it's probably better to just require them to submit in a certain structure, which Gradescope will in the future make easier to verify.

This script calls compile.sh and run.sh to compile and run code.

compile.sh

This script finds all source files under the src directory and compiles them. It adds the junit and hamcrest jars in the lib directory to the classpath (hamcrest is a dependency of JUnit). It produces output in the classes directory.

run.sh

This script just runs the IntListTest class. It adds the compiled classes and bundled libraries to the classpath.

AbstractIntList.java

This is the abstract base class for the students' IntList implementation. It's essentially a linked list for ints, with a few operations you can do on it. It has a constructor and .equals() method implemented, so that you can rely on those things being consistent in your tests.

RefIntList.java

This is a "reference implementation" of the IntList class. One possible approach to writing tests is to have your reference implementation as part of your autograder, and compare the student's return values to the reference implementation. Also, if you need to rely on certain functions in the student's code working for some tests, you should use your reference implementation to set up the test data structures and then call the student's code. For Java, this may require setting up a copy constructor in your students' class.

IntList.java

This is the template file that you would give to students to fill in. It has some parts filled in that should be kept by students; in particular, the copy constructor is used in the tests to allow setting up a test using the reference implementation and then copying the data to an instance of the student's implementation so that you can test individual functions in isolation instead of relying on students to implement basic functionality correctly. Due to the way Java works this can't be done in the abstract parent class.

IntList.java solution

This is an example solution. It's just the reference implementation with the name changed. You can submit this to Gradescope to see how it works.

IntListTest.java

This is the actual Test class. It imports the necessary parts of jh61b, JUnit, and the student's code. Then, it runs a set of basic tests on the student's code.

IntListPredicates.java

This is another Test class, just to demonstrate multi-class test suites.

RunTests.java

This class actually runs the tests. This demonstrates setting up a Suite in JUnit.