[Spring] Exception is thrown complaining about multiple matching beans with version 1.2.5

[EugeneS30]

In the process of transitioning from version Cucumber 1.1.8 to 1.2.5 I have ran into an issue where the below exception is thrown:

CucumberException No qualifying bean of type x is defined: expected single matching bean but found 2

I tried to dig a bit deeper and I see that the <T> T getInstance(final Class<T> type) method in SpringFactory class had changed and apparently is somehow responsible for that behavior.

I was able to replicate this behavior in a simple project which I uploaded to github and the link is below.

Cucumber Version: 1.2.5
Operating System and version: Windows 7
Link to your project: https://github.com/EugeneS30/cucumber-bean-defect-verification.git

[mpkorstanje]

It appears to be that CoffeeSteps twice is registered twice. Once because it has the @ContextHierarchy/@ContextConfiguration annotation and once because it inherits the @Component annotation. One causes the bean to be named functional.coffeeSteps while the other causes the bean to be named coffeeSteps.

I do believe Cucumber should be smart enough to handle this but I don't know how to achieve this yet.

For the time being though you can declare CoffeeSteps without the @Component declaration.

@ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")})
public class CoffeeSteps {

[mpkorstanje]

This bug is also present is 2.0.x.

[EugeneS30]

@mpkorstanje Thanks for the analysis.
In my project though if I get rid of the @Component annotation, I will end up getting the Annotations differs on glue classes found exception.

So it looks like I can't solve one issue without triggering the other.

[brasmusson]

@EugeneS30 If your only put the @ContextHierarchy/@ContextConfiguration annotations on classes that do not have the @Component annotation, it should work (Cucumber-JVM only need to find one glue classes with @ContextHierarchy/@ContextConfiguration).

[EugeneS30]

@brasmusson Hi, thanks for your input.

Yes, I have already tried different combinations but I always end up getting this error one way or another.

Initially I used a parent class BddGlue that was defining the @ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")}) and all other classes inherited from it.

Now I removed this class to make things a bit clearer and annotated all the classes that used to inherit from it with:
@ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")})

Most of these classes do not need to be annotated with @Component anyway but the only class that does need, is triggering the double bean creation issue. Even though this class is not even annotated with:
@ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")}). It just has the @Component annotation.

[EugeneS30]

@mpkorstanje @brasmusson Hi, I have just removed all double annotations so that all glue including classes only have @ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")}) and do not have the @component annotation and I have few classes annotated with @component but no @ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")}).

Even in such case I get the double bean exception for one of the classes annotated with @Component even though it does not have any other annotations.

[EugeneS30]

Just an update. As a workaround I was able to avoid the exception by using @Primary annotation in addition to @Component.

[mpkorstanje]

I reckon the problem can be found at SpringFactory.java#L114

    @Override
    public void start() {
        if (stepClassWithSpringContext != null) {
            testContextManager = new CucumberTestContextManager(stepClassWithSpringContext);
        } else {
            if (beanFactory == null) {
                beanFactory = createFallbackContext();
            }
        }
        notifyContextManagerAboutTestClassStarted();
        if (beanFactory == null || isNewContextCreated()) {
            beanFactory = testContextManager.getBeanFactory();
            for (Class<?> stepClass : stepClasses) {
                registerStepClassBeanDefinition(beanFactory, stepClass);
            }
        }
        GlueCodeContext.getInstance().start();
}

All stepClasses are registered as bean definitions. The set of step classes may however also include the stepClassWithSpringContext when annotated with @Component. When annotated stepClassWithSpringContext will be registered as a bean when used to create the CucumberTestContextManager.

[mpkorstanje]

Unfortunately we can't resolve this by simply skipping the registration of stepClassWithSpringContext when it is already defined.

We can't detect duplicate registrations. Bean registration is done by name. This is the fully qualified name when the bean is registered through class path scanning by cucumber, but only the fqn minus the root scanning package when done by Spring.

I reckon the current code is correct. But we could improve it somewhat by throw an exception when @Component or related stereo types are detected.

@mpkorstanje @brasmusson Hi, I have just removed all double annotations so that all glue including classes only have @ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")}) and do not have the @component annotation and I have few classes annotated with @component but no @ContextHierarchy({@ContextConfiguration("classpath:/cucumber.xml")}).
Even in such case I get the double bean exception for one of the classes annotated with @component even though it does not have any other annotations.

@EugeneS30 do you by any chance happen to have multiple component scans going on? If they're using different but related base packages all components will be registered twice with different names (fqn minus the root scanning package).

[EugeneS30]

@mpkorstanje The project I am working on is dependent on few other modules where different cucumber.xml are defined. You reckon that could cause multiple components scan? Thanks

[mpkorstanje]

@EugeneS30 possibly. You'd have to put a break poing at DefaultListableBeanFactory#registerBeanDefinition and see which beans are registered and where they came from.