Add @BeforeAll and @AfterAll hooks

[aslakhellesoy]

People keep asking for BeforeAll and AfterAll hooks. I haven't had a big need for them myself, but it seems to me this would be sufficient:

public class GlobalHooks {
    private static boolean dunit = false;

    @Before
    public void beforeAll() {
        if(!dunit) {
            Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(afterAllThread);
            // do the beforeAll stuff...
            dunit = true;
        }
    }
}

If this doesn't cut it for you, please explain in this ticket, and maybe we'll add special support for it.

[mattwynne]

Does that fire when the process dies, or just the current cucumber run? What if you wanted to do multiple runs without killing the process? (In an Aruba 5.2 stylee)

[aslakhellesoy]

It wouldn't be triggered by a VM shutdown. It would be part of the runner's life cycle and fire after the last scenario.

For Java I think they would have to be defined as static methods as well.

[tmertens]

What would happen if you try to embed data into the report in this
"BeforeAll" hook? It seems your example would work well for running some
code only once at the start of the scenarios, but any embedded would be
inserted into the first scenario that runs that code and not at the root
level of the report.

Furthermore, I supposed embed wouldn't work in the shutdown hook either in
the above case. Given scenario.embed is used for embedding data in
reports, I'm guessing there would have to be some new object reference in
order to embed data in the reports for @BeforeAll/@afterall hooks outside
of the scenarios.

Cheers,

-Tim

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 6:46 AM, Aslak Hellesøy [email protected]:

It wouldn't be triggered by a VM shutdown. It would be part of the
runner's life cycle and fire after the last scenario.

For Java I think they would have to be defined as static methods as well.

—
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.

[aslakhellesoy]

What would happen if you try to embed data into the report in this "BeforeAll" hook?

From a BeforeAll/AfterAll hook you would have optional access to a Report object with similar embed methods as the Scenario object available to Before/After hooks. Embeddings embedded from a BeforeAll would end up at the top of the report, before the first scenario. Similar for embeddings embedded from AfterAll - they would end up in the report after the last scenario.

If you attempt to do a Scenario.embed from an AfterAll hook you would get an exception - the scenario would be "closed" by then.

[mikquinlan]

We definitely have many uses for this. Currently we use a static
initialiser (which I think we got from this forum) to start up embedded
databases, Hadoop's Mini MR cluster among other things.

It would be good to have a clear annotation such as @BeforeAll and
@afterall rather than a specific method name with an @before tag.

On 2 May 2013 07:37, Aslak Hellesøy [email protected] wrote:

What would happen if you try to embed data into the report in this
"BeforeAll" hook?

From a BeforeAll/AfterAll hook you would have optional access to a Reportobject with similar embed methods as the
Scenario object available to Before/After hooks. Embeddings embedded from
a BeforeAll would end up at the top of the report, before the first
scenario. Similar for embeddings embedded from AfterAll - they would end
up in the report after the last scenario.

If you attempt to do a Scenario.embed from an AfterAll hook you would get
an exception - the scenario would be "closed" by then.

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.

[pranasblk]

+1. I want having multiple BeforeAll and AfterAll supported (opposite to not like World)

[mikquinlan]

Any movement on this issue? I'd love to have it. Of course, I'm just one person. ;-)

[aslakhellesoy]

Those of you who need it - how about sending a pull request?

[quantoid]

+1 because the trick above won't work for AfterAll

[paoloambrosio]

@quantoid It's not a trick, it's Java! Why do you say that it does not work for AfterAll? The only Issue I see is with reports.

The @AfterAll hook would be the afterAllThread variable in Aslak's code.

Added this snippet to the Java Hello World Example:

    @Before
    public void beforeAll() {
        if(!dunit) {
            Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(new Thread() {
                public void run() {
                    System.out.println("snake!");
                }
            });
            System.out.println("badger");
            dunit = true;
        }
    }

After changing the runner to use the progress formatter, when I run mvn test, I get the desired behaviour:

badger

.........
Tests run: 12, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.466 sec
snake!

[quantoid]

Sorry, I can see how it works in Java, I should've added "...in Groovy" but could be wrong about that too.

I'd want both 'all' hooks to be able to access variables that other glue can access, i.e. those in the Script scope.

[paoloambrosio]

Same thing in the groovy-calculator example with BeforeAll and AfterAll, accessing the World object that contains shared variables.

class CustomWorld {

    def value = null
    def dunit = false

    // ...
}

Before() {
    if (!dunit) {
        dunit = true

        println "badger"
        value = "snake!" // sets the value in the World

        addShutdownHook {
            println value // reads the value from the World
        }
    }
}

Note that if you change the value variable in other steps, the shutdown hook is not going to print snake!, so the value is not determined when the closure is defined but when it is called (at the very end).

This change to a step will make the AfterAll closure print mushroom:

Then(~"the stored result should be (.*)") { double expected ->
    value = "mushroom"
    assert expected == result
}

Of course it works even if you define the value variable outside of the World object.

[quantoid]

Awesome, thanks! Where does the addShutdownHook come from? There seem to be so many classes mixed in to the scope of these closures.

[paoloambrosio]

@quantoid No magic there, it's part of the Groovy Object API

[quantoid]

Hmm, IMHO would be better to tear stuff down as part of the feature execution block rather than when the JVM shuts down.

[TarekSaid]

Hi,

I'd like to create a test database then destroy it after all the tests are done. The static boolean works for the @before tag, creating my database only once.

But how would I drop the database only after all my tests are done?

[aslakhellesoy]

@TarekSaid this is a bug tracker, not a support forum. Please ask on the cukes google group. See https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

[tschmal]

This will work OK for as completely global before/after, but it doesn't work if you want the behavior per feature file. For example, I may have 5 different feature files, each one having 10 different scenarios. Per feature, I may want a before/after. This workaround isn't per feature, but is per EVERYTHING. A per feature before/after would be nice.

For example, JBehave has a @Before/AfterStories. The code discussed in this thread would be equivalent to that, so this annotation isn't really necessary. It also has @Before/AfterScenario, which is equivalent to Cucumber's @Before/After. However, JBehave also has a @Before/AfterStory (singular) which isn't really doable with Cucumber-JVM (that I can tell). This would be very useful.

If you think about it, JUnit has it, too, with @Before/AfterClass.

Maybe I'm blind and there is a way to do it in Cucumber... but I can't see it.

[paoloambrosio]

@tschmal before/after feature hooks are out of the scope of this issue. They were discussed several times on The Cukes Google Group, so you might search there. In a recent thread I explained how to deal with feature tags. If you still think you need it, please write on the list first and explain your problem.

[wjpowell]

You don't need to do this in cucumber. Use the @BeforeClass and @afterclass annotation from within the JUnit test used to run the cucumber tests. This has the benefit of running only for the features specified by the paths or tags options.

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@Cucumber.Options(format = {"html:target/cucumber-html-report", "json-pretty:target/cucumber-json-report.json"})
public class RunCukesTest {

    @BeforeClass
    public static void setup() {
        System.out.println("Ran the before");
    }

    @AfterClass
    public static void teardown() {
        System.out.println("Ran the after");
    }
}

[aslakhellesoy]

@wjpowell there is nothing in the Cucumber runner that handles @BeforeClass/@afterclass. Have you actually tried this?

[wjpowell]

@aslakhellesoy I've tried it, and it works. The Cucumber runner calls super.run which handles the @BeforeClass and @afterclass annotated methods, as well as any @ClassRule defined.

[aslakhellesoy]

Thanks for the clarification. I thought it might be something like that.

[andryutz10]

Pull request created for this issue: #672
Just waiting for someone to take a look and approve it if its all good.

[alisterscott]

Would love to see this included in the latest version :)

[mattwynne]

I just used the BeforeClass and AfterClass annotations today and they worked perfectly. I'm not sure why we need to add our own BeforeAll / AfterAll hooks.

[andryutz10]

@mattwynne, I see a few reasons:

1. @BeforeClass and @afterclass are not part of the cucumber and having them in the runner class as static has no benefit but has a few downsides (usually a DI container is used and some components are injected in stepdefs classes to be used for "setUp/initialization" - how do you get those in the runner class on static context?? plus polluting the runner class with test logic)
2. when you want to select a feature in Intellij Idea and run it, the cli.Main class will be used and your methods from runner class with @BeforeClass and @afterclass will never run.
3. I don't know how many of you had this problem but in the last two years I used cucumber a lot, and I can say that because of small things like the setUp/tearDown for cucumber tests, your code for tests will get messy and hard to maintain because of the static state. For an example cucumber test, yes you can use in the runner @BeforeClass and @afterclass just to say that works, but in real world projects is not the same, you'll encounter all kinds of issues and something like @BeforeAll and @afterall helps a lot. That's my opinion and I might be wrong, but that is way I created this PR.

[aslakhellesoy]

@mattwynne Because those annotations are from JUnit and they only work when you use the JUnit Cucumber runner.

Many people use Cucumber-JVM with the command-line runner, without JUnit at all, and then this would not work.

[hemanthsridhar]

https://medium.com/@hemanthsridhar92/global-hooks-in-cucumber-jvm-afc1be13e487
Please follow this tutorial

[RayEltaib]

Can you please provide one for @afterall
I need it to close the driver after all the testing is done I don't want to keep closing the driver every time after each scenario it wastes a lot of time.
Right now I achieve that via having a feature specifically for that but that creates a problem because my @after method has to deal with the UI.

[haroon-sheikh]

@RayEltaib Have you tried this yet https://terribletester.com/beforeall-and-afterall-workaround-for-cucumber-java?

[fstarred]

Hi there,
I came to next solution, that does not require hooks or @BeforeClass/etc JUnit annotations, maybe it will be useful for someone. It is valid for Java8 + io.cucumber model and its reworked plugin approach:

1. Create new plugin class by implementing `cucumber.api.formatter.Formatter` interface:

package com.foo.bar;

import cucumber.api.event.EventHandler;
import cucumber.api.event.EventPublisher;
import cucumber.api.event.TestRunFinished;
import cucumber.api.event.TestRunStarted;
import cucumber.api.formatter.Formatter;

public class Initialization implements Formatter {

    private EventHandler<TestRunStarted> setup = event -> {
        // setup static method(-s) here  
    };

    private EventHandler<TestRunFinished> teardown = event -> {
        // tear down static method(-s) here  
    };

    @Override
    public void setEventPublisher(EventPublisher publisher) {
        publisher.registerHandlerFor(TestRunStarted.class, setup);
        publisher.registerHandlerFor(TestRunFinished.class, teardown);
    }
}

1. Apply this plugin to Cucumber main class, e.g. like in next example:

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@CucumberOptions(
        features = "src/test/resources/features/",
        glue = "com.foo.definitions",
        plugin = {"com.foo.bar.Initialization"})
public class CucumberRunner {
}

or via command line option like -Dcucumber.options="--plugin com.foo.bar.Initialization" etc.
P.S. In this way we are able to implement not only BeforeAll/AfterAll behavior, but also interceptors for very different Cucumber events (before/after features, scenarios, steps), full list here.

I've tried this idea and it seems very interesting but my biggest question is, why exactly does the handler only run at the end of the suite?

Nice job!
For the latest cucumber core, use ConcurrentEventListener instead of Formatter class

[ThanhTra1]

Junit BeforeClass and AfterClass annotations work fine if you are using a JUnit runner. No issues with the static state.. Works fine with Page object Model for me.

Could you help me ? What should i do about it? I am stuck it a week and i dont have any ideal for it