Using multiple classes in Cucumber glue option package

Question

I have a problem using the glue option when running Cucumber tests. Here's my test runner class:

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@CucumberOptions(features="src/test/java/com/xcase/tests/cucumber/features/api/APITest.feature",glue={"com.xcase.tests.cucumber.stepdefinitions.api"})
public class APIRunnerTest {

}

I run the tests along these lines:

mvn clean test -Dtest=APIRunnerTest

If I put all of my step definitions in a single class in the glue package, com.xcase.tests.cucumber.stepdefinitions.api.FirstSteps , then my tests run fine.

If I add an empty class to the com.xcase.tests.cucumber.stepdefinitions.api package, say com.xcase.tests.cucumber.stepdefinitions.api.SecondSteps ,then my tests run fine. However, if I modify SecondSteps to extend FirstSteps , then my tests stop running completely! Why is that?

This is a problem for me because I'd like to put some shared step definitions and fields in a base step definition class and then have multiple classes that extend the base class. How should I do this?

Answer 1

However, if I modify SecondSteps to extend FirstSteps , then my tests stop running completely! Why is that?

You now have two classes that declare steps. And because SecondSteps extends FirstSteps , SecondSteps will declare the same exact steps as FirstSteps . So Cucumber can't decide which steps should be run.

This is a problem for me because I'd like to put some shared step definitions and fields in a base step definition class and then have multiple classes that extend the base class. How should I do this?

If you want to share information between steps you should use a world object . The documentation uses ruby but after adding cucumber-pico as a dependency it works the same way in Java. For a dated tutorial check Sharing state between steps in Cucumber-JVM using PicoContainer