How to implement different data for cucumber scenarios based on environment - cucumber

Question

I have an issue with executing the cucumber-jvm scenarios in different environments. Data that is incorporated in the feature files for scenarios belongs to one environment. To execute the scenarios in different environemnts, I need to update the data in the features files as per the environment to be executed.
for example, in the following scenario, i have the search criteria included in the feature file. search criteria is valid for lets say QA env.
Scenario: search user with valid criteria
Given user navigated to login page
And clicked search link
When searched by providing search criteria
|fname1 |lname1 |address1|address2|city1|state1|58884|
Then verify the results displayed
it works fine in QA env. But to execute the same scenario in other environments (UAT,stage..), i need to modify search criteria in feature files as per the data in those environments.
I'm thinking about maintaing the data for scenarios in properties file for different environments and read it based on the execution environment.
if data is in properties file, scenario will look like below. Instead of the search criteria, I will give propertyName:
Scenario: search user with valid criteria
Given user navigated to login page
And clicked search link
When searched by providing search criteria
|validSearchCriteria|
Then verify the results displayed
Is there any other way I could maintain the data for scenarios for all environments and use it as per the environment the scenario is getting executed? please let me know.
Thanks

Answer 1

I understand the problem, but I don't quite understand the example, so allow me to provide my own example to illustrate how this can be solved.
Let's assume we test a library management software and that in our development environment our test data have 3 books by Leo Tolstoy.
We can have test case like this:
Scenario: Search by Author
When I search for "Leo Tolstoy" books
Then I should get result "3"
Now let's assume we create our QA test environment and in that environment we have 5 books by Leo Tolstoy. The question is how do we modify our test case so it works in both environments?
One way is to use tags. For example:
#dev_env
Scenario: Search by Author
When I search for "Leo Tolstoy" books
Then I should get result "3"
#qa_env
Scenario: Search by Author
When I search for "Leo Tolstoy" books
Then I should get result "5"
The problem here is that we have lots of code duplication. We can solve that by using Scenario Outline, like this:
Scenario Outline: Search by Author
When I search for "Leo Tolstoy"
Then I should see "<number_of_books>" books
#qa_env
Examples:
| number_of_books |
| 5 |
#dev_env
Examples:
| number_of_books |
| 3 |
Now when you execute the tests, you should use #dev_env tag in dev environment and #qa_env in QA environment.
I'll be glad to hear some other ways to solve this problem.

Answer 2

You can do this in two ways
Push the programming up, so that you pass in the search criteria by the way you run cucumber
Push the programming down, so that your step definition uses the environment to decide where to get the valid search criteria from
Both of these involve writing a more abstract feature that does not specify the details of the search criteria. So you should end up with a feature that is like
Scenario: Search with valid criteria
When I search with valid criteria
Then I get valid results
I would implement this using the second method and write the step definitions as follows:
When "I search with valid criteria" do
search_with_valid_criteria
end
module SearchStepHelper
def search_with_valid_criteria
criteria = retrieve_criteria
search_with criteria
end
def retrieve_criteria
# get the environment you are working in
# use the environment to retrieve the search criteria
# return the criteria
end
end
World SearchStepHelper
Notice that all I have done is change the place where you do the work, from the feature, to a helper method in a module.
This means that as you are doing your programming in a proper programming language (rather than in the features) you can do whatever you want to get the correct criteria.

Answer 3

This may have been answered elsewhere but the team I work with currently tends to prefer pushing environmental-specific pre-conditions down into the code behind the step definitions.
One way to do this is by setting the environment name as an environment variable in the process running the test runner class. An example could be $ENV set to 'Dev'. Then #Before each scenario is tested it is possible verify the environment in which the scenario is being executed and load any environment-specific data needed by the scenario:
#Before
public void before(Scenario scenario) throws Throwable {
String scenarioName = scenario.getName();
env = System.getenv("ENV");
if (env == null) {
env = "Dev";
}
envHelper.loadEnvironmentSpecificVariables();
}
Here we set a 'default' value of 'Dev' in case the test runner is run without the environment variable being set. The envHelper points to a test utility class with the method loadEnvironmentSpecificVariables() that could load data from a JSON, csv, XML file with data specific to the environment being tested against.
An advantage of this approach is that it can help to de-clutter Feature files from potentially distracting environmental meta-data which can impact the readability of the feature outside of the development and testing domains.