Cucumber-Java Skeleton

This is the simplest possible build script setup for Cucumber using Java. There is nothing fancy like a webapp or browser testing. All this does is to show you how to install and run Cucumber!

Get the code

Git:

git clone https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-java-skeleton.git
cd cucumber-java-skeleton

Subversion:

svn checkout https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-java-skeleton
cd cucumber-java-skeleton

Or simply download a zip or tarball.

Use Maven

Open a command window and run:

mvn test

This runs Cucumber features using Cucumber's JUnit runner. The @RunWith(Cucumber.class) annotation on the RunCukesTest class tells JUnit to kick off Cucumber.

Use Ant

Open a command window and run:

ant download
ant runcukes

This runs Cucumber features using Cucumber's Command Line Interface (CLI) runner. Note that the RunCukesTest junit class is not used at all. If you remove it (and the cucumber-junit jar dependency), it will run just the same.

Overriding options

The Cucumber runtime parses command line options to know what features to run, where the glue code lives, what formatters to use etc. When you use the JUnit runner, these options are generated from the @CucumberOptions annotation on your test.

Sometimes it can be useful to override these options without changing or recompiling the JUnit class. This can be done with the cucumber.options system property. The general form is:

Using Maven:

mvn -Dcucumber.options="..." test

Using Ant:

JAVA_OPTIONS='-Dcucumber.options="..."' ant runcukes

Let's look at some things you can do with cucumber.options. Try this:

-Dcucumber.options="--help"

That should list all the available options.

Run a subset of Features or Scenarios

Specify a particular scenario by line (and use the pretty format)

-Dcucumber.options="classpath:skeleton/belly.feature:4 --format pretty"

This works because Maven puts ./src/test/resources on your classpath. You can also specify files to run by filesystem path:

-Dcucumber.options="src/test/resources/skeleton/belly.feature:4 --format pretty"

You can also specify what to run by tag:

-Dcucumber.options="--tags @bar --format pretty"

Specify a different formatter:

For example a JUnit formatter:

-Dcucumber.options="--format junit:target/cucumber-junit-report.xml"