Transform Static Values in Gherkin

Introduction

This library when running as a maven plugin will transform hard-coded values on feature files in Cucumber-JVM based automation, and in some cases, this also helps to substitute values, mostly for the commonly used data from yaml files.

Objective

— no hard-coded test data in feature files within automation projects

— auto-generate date values (past or future) to stay relevant before test runs

Requirement

Maven

Cucumber-JVM

Jayway’s JsonPath()

Installation

Add this block to pom.xml

<plugins>
  ...
  <plugin>
    <groupId>io.github.5v1988</groupId>
    <artifactId>bdd-transform-values-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.3</version>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>transform-values</goal>
        </goals>
      </execution>
    </executions>
  </plugin>
  ...
</plugins>

By default, this plugin will look for substituting values from the file: token.yaml. Optionally, the file with a different name can also be passed as follows:

<plugin>
    ...
    <configuration>
        <tokenFileName>another-file.yaml</tokenFileName>
    </configuration>
    ...
</plugin>

After adding this plugin dependency on pom.xml, along with surefire-plugin, mvn test either substitutes values from yaml file by matching the path or auto-generate like in case of date values. Please also note that it doesn't modify the original feature files, but the ones in build directory: target

Examples

token.yaml

test-config:
  url: https://test.com
account:
  email: test@email.com
  password: qa-test123!
  name: Tommy

Feature: Login feature

  @example1
  Scenario: To verify that the user logins successfully [without plugin]
    Given User opens the app url: "https://test.com"
    When User enters account details: "test@email.com" and "qa-test123!"
    Then User verifies the name as : "Tommy" and date as "06/26/2023"

  @example2
  Scenario Outline: To verify that the user logins successfully [with plugin]
    Given User opens the app url: "[ type: token, path: test-config.url ]"
    When User enters account details: "<UserName>" and "<Password>"
    Then User verifies the name as : "<Name>" and date as "[ type: date, format: MM/dd/yyyy, delta: 0 ]"

    Examples:
      | UserName                             | Password                                | Name                                |
      | [ type: token, path: account.email ] | [ type: token, path: account.password ] | [ type: token, path: account.name ] |

Explanation

[ type: token, path: account.email ] => In this template, Jsonpath account.name gets value Tommy from the yaml file

[ type: date, format: MM/dd/yyyy, delta: -1 ] => Yesterday's date in MM/dd/yyyy format

[ type: date, format: dd-MM-yyyy, delta: 1 ] => Tomorrow's date in dd-MM-yyyy format

To-Do

[ type: random, format: mobile-number ] => This template returns randomly generated mobile number. other formats could be last-name, full-name, mobile-number, address-line-1 etc.

How to help

If you come across an issue while using this plugin, do help to file a bug here

Thank you for reading!

Veera.