cucumber

What is cucumber?

Cucumber is a tool for running automated tests written in plain language. It allows you to write tests that anyone can understand, regardless of their technical knowledge. Cucumber supports Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and is used to bridge the communication gap between stakeholders and developers.

What are cucumber's main functionalities?

Writing Features in Gherkin

Cucumber uses Gherkin syntax to define test scenarios in plain language. This makes it easy for non-technical stakeholders to understand and contribute to the test cases.

Feature: User login
  Scenario: Successful login
    Given the user is on the login page
    When the user enters valid credentials
    Then the user should be redirected to the dashboard

Step Definitions

Step definitions are the actual code implementations of the steps defined in Gherkin. They link the plain language steps to executable code.

const { Given, When, Then } = require('@cucumber/cucumber');

Given('the user is on the login page', function () {
  // code to navigate to login page
});

When('the user enters valid credentials', function () {
  // code to enter credentials
});

Then('the user should be redirected to the dashboard', function () {
  // code to check redirection
});

Hooks

Hooks allow you to run code before and after each scenario. This is useful for setting up and tearing down test environments.

const { Before, After } = require('@cucumber/cucumber');

Before(function () {
  // code to run before each scenario
});

After(function () {
  // code to run after each scenario
});

Data Tables

Data tables allow you to run the same scenario with multiple sets of data. This is useful for testing different input combinations.

Feature: User login
  Scenario Outline: Successful login with multiple users
    Given the user is on the login page
    When the user enters <username> and <password>
    Then the user should be redirected to the dashboard

    Examples:
      | username | password |
      | user1    | pass1    |
      | user2    | pass2    |

Other packages similar to cucumber

jest-cucumber

jest-cucumber is a library that allows you to use Cucumber's Gherkin syntax with Jest. It provides a way to write BDD-style tests using Jest as the test runner. Compared to Cucumber, jest-cucumber is more tightly integrated with Jest and may be easier to set up for projects already using Jest.

cypress-cucumber-preprocessor

cypress-cucumber-preprocessor is a plugin for Cypress that allows you to write your tests in Gherkin syntax. It combines the power of Cypress for end-to-end testing with the readability of Cucumber. This package is ideal for teams that prefer using Cypress for their testing needs but want to leverage BDD.

codeceptjs

CodeceptJS is an end-to-end testing framework that supports BDD-style tests. It allows you to write tests in plain language and supports multiple test runners and helpers. Compared to Cucumber, CodeceptJS offers more flexibility in terms of test runners and integrations.

README

Cucumber.js

Cucumber brought (natively) to your JavaScript stack.

It can run basic fatures inside both Node.js and web browsers.

It still needs a lot of work. Only a few feature elements are supported at the moment.

Prerequesites

• Node.js 0.4.8 (tested on 0.4.7 too)
• npm 1.0.6

Works on

• Node.js 0.4.7, 0.4.8, 0.5.0-pre
• Google Chrome 13.0.772.0 (dev)
• Firefox 4.0.1
• Safari 5.0.5

And probably lots of other browsers.

Setup for using in Node.js and running tests

Install the required dependencies:

$ npm link

Play with it!

$ node example/server.js

Then go to localhost:9797.

Run tests

Specs

$ node_modules/.bin/jasmine-node spec

Features & documentation

There is a common set of features shared between all cucumber implementations. Find more on the cucumber-features repository.

The official way of running them is through Cucumber-ruby and Aruba. Ruby and Bundler are required for this to work.

$ git submodule update --init
$ bundle
$ rm -rf doc; ARUBA_REPORT_DIR=doc cucumber features/cucumber-features -r features

You can then open the generated documentation:

$ open doc/features/cucumber-features/*.html # might open a lot of files ;)

In addition to that, Cucumber.js is able to run the features for itself too:

$ ./bin/cucumber.js features/cucumber-features -r features

There are a few other Cucumber.js-dependent features. Execute everything:

$ ./bin/cucumber.js

Rake

Alternatively, you can run everything with the help of Rake:

$ git submodule update --init
$ bundle
$ rake

Debug messages

You can display debug messages by setting the DEBUG_LEVEL environment variable. It goes from 1 to 5. 5 will diplay everything, 1 will only print out the critical things.

$ DEBUG_LEVEL=5 ./bin/cucumber.js

It even works with Aruba:

$ rm -rf doc; DEBUG_LEVEL=5 ARUBA_REPORT_DIR=doc cucumber features/cucumber-features -r features
$ open doc/features/cucumber-features/*.html # you'll see debug messages in Aruba-generated docs

Changelog

[0.2.1]

Added

• Allow custom World constructors (Julien Biezemans)
• Add support for data tables (with conversion to hashes) (#12, Julien Biezemans)

Changed

• Demonstrate World object usages in web example (Julien Biezemans)