Cucumber and Spring boot integration has error

Question

Spring boot and cucumber integration, when I do package this project become jar use mvn package command and produce advvic-1.0.jar. But, if I run this jar

java -jar target/advvic-1.0.jar

I get this error :

Caused by: cucumber.runtime.CucumberException: No backends were found. Please make sure you have a backend module on your CLASSPATH.

However, if I extract this jar, I found cucumber-java.jar on lib folder

this my pom :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.advvic.cucumber.spring</groupId>
    <artifactId>advvic</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>cucumber-spring-boot</name>
    <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>

        <spring-boot.version>1.4.1.RELEASE</spring-boot.version>

        <cucumber.version>1.2.5</cucumber.version>
        <selenium.version>3.0.1</selenium.version>
        <htmlunit.version>2.13</htmlunit.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencyManagement>
        <dependencies>
            <dependency>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-dependencies</artifactId>
                <version>${spring-boot.version}</version>
                <type>pom</type>
                <scope>import</scope>
            </dependency>
        </dependencies>
    </dependencyManagement>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
            <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>info.cukes</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-java</artifactId>
            <version>${cucumber.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>info.cukes</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-core</artifactId>
            <version>${cucumber.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>info.cukes</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-spring</artifactId>
            <version>${cucumber.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>info.cukes</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-junit</artifactId>
            <version>${cucumber.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.12</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
            <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
            <version>20.0</version>
        </dependency>

        <!--Selenium server dependency is for version 3 and up -->
        <!--https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.seleniumhq.selenium/selenium-server -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
            <artifactId>selenium-server</artifactId>
            <version>${selenium.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
            <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
            <version>${selenium.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>xml-apis</groupId>
            <artifactId>xml-apis</artifactId>
            <version>1.4.01</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.javassist</groupId>
            <artifactId>javassist</artifactId>
            <version>3.20.0-GA</version>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>${spring-boot.version}</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <configuration>
                            <executable>true</executable>
                            <attach>true</attach>
                        </configuration>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>repackage</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>

            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.5.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <executable>true</executable>
                    <source>1.8</source>
                    <target>1.8</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem with a Spring Boot application that I wanted to use as a runner for Cucumber tests.

The problem is that Spring Boot repackages everything in its own way, thus making it hard for the default Cucumber ResourceLoaders to locate any cucumber.runtime.Backend classes as well as feature files and step definitions.

What I ended up doing was to implement a custom cucumber.runtime.io.ResourceLoader using Spring specific classes to search the classpath. I got the idea for that at https://stackoverflow.com/a/17283721/3216618

PathMatchingResourcePatternResolver resolver = new PathMatchingResourcePatternResolver();
String locationPattern = ... use path and suffix to 
Resource[] resources = resolver.getResources(locationPattern);

Finally you need to create an Iterable from the found org.springframework.core.io.Resource[]

Answer 2

Maybe this can help you:

       <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <requiresUnpack>
                    <dependency>
                        <groupId>info.cukes</groupId>
                        <artifactId>cucumber-java</artifactId>
                    </dependency>
                </requiresUnpack>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>