Cucumber -Given precondition - cucumber

Question

Hello everyone,
To proceed with order product scenario I should log in, I am asking if I could use in my scenario a given step like :
Scenario: Order product
Given I log in
.
.
And in the steps defintion class I will call the login steps inside the given of order product:
#Given("^I log in$")
public void I_log_in(){
Given(string.Format("I am on login page"));
When(string.Format("I log in with valid username and password));
Then (string.Format("I should be logged in));
}
PS: I tried to use the hook before to run login actions before this scenario using a tag (above it), but I find it's not a good practice to set actions on before, also the Backgound keyword will not work here beacause there are scenarios in the same feature don't require login.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I don't think you can do this and you definitely don't want to do this.
If we look at each step you want to nest and think about the code inside it we have
Note: I don't cuke in java but I'll try and explain using your code
Given(string.Format("I am on login page"))
foo code
...
When(string.Format("I log in with valid username and password));
bar code
...
note: the ellipsis represent all the code that does stuff
Now if you want to implement I am on login page and I log in with valid username and password then you can just do
Given(string.Format("I am on login page and I log in with valid username and password")
foo code
...
bar code
...
Now the only problem you have is that you have two copies of foo code. You can solve that by extracting a method. This would give you
Given(string.Format("I am on login page and I log in with valid username and password")
call foo code
call bar code
and would mean that you rewrite your original steps as
Given(string.Format("I am on login page"))
call foo code
When(string.Format("I log in with valid username and password));
call bar code
If you write all your step definitions as single line calls, then you can easily make compound step definitions by just combining calls.
Finally you should make your compound step definition a single call
Given(string.Format("I am on login page and I log in with valid username and password")
call baz code
and then implement baz as
void baz() {
foo
bar
}
So now even your compound call is defined outside of your step definitions.
To do this you have to understand Cucumbers mechanism for allowing you to define and call methods outside of step definitions. This is really easy in Ruby, but I don't know the java equivalent, apologies.
Eventually you'll end up with a number of methods foo, bar, baz that you have to organise. Thats a known simple problem which all programming languages support. By taking this problem out of Cucumber and into Java you will (in the longer term) make things much simpler for yourself.
I hope you can use the ideas here to make you Cuking simpler.

Answer 2

Since it's a precondition, I'd rewrite to Given I am logged in (or maybe even provide some information about what type of user logs in, rather than use I? like a customer, admin, ...?)
Note that you cannot call steps from steps in cucumber-jvm (by design!)
Inside your login() method, you can call several helper methods that perform the actions needed to actually be logged in, like:
navigateToLoginPage();
enterUsernamePassword("user", "pass);
assert.something() // Make sure login was successful
Also, log a message when login was not successful; which will help you analyse failures)