Defining several steps for the same function

[javierseixas]

Is there any way to have more than one step definition (of the same type) for the same function? Something like:

@Then("^it's do something$")
@Then("^it's do another thing$")
public void this_is_my_function() throws Throwable {
    // Do something
}

I now that in Behat (PHP) and Specflow (C#) it is possible.

I'm getting the following error:

Error:(86, 5) java: cucumber.api.java.en.Then is not a repeatable annotation type

I found a post talking about a workaround for Java 7, and a solution for Java 8 using @Repeatable.

I tried the Java 7 approach but it doesn't work either:

@Thens({
    @Then("^it's do something$")
    @Then("^it's do another thing$")
})

I guess I should define @Thens as a new annotation type, but I would like to depend only in what the library has.

Is it possible to include the `@Repetable' annotation in the code?

[aslakhellesoy]

Wouldn't multiple patterns for the same stepdef make your domain language less precise?

Can you give me a real world example of when this would be useful?

[javierseixas]

My real world example where I realised that was this:

@When("^it's ([a-z]+) is decreased to (\\d+)$")
@When("^it's ([a-z]+) is increased to (\\d+)$")
public void it_s_feeling_is_increased_to(String feeling, int value) throws Throwable {
    try {
        Method method = tamagotchi.getClass().getMethod(feeling);
        try {
            assertThat(method.invoke(tamagotchi), is(value));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            // ...
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        // ...
    }
}

It's a Tamagotchi game. The first parameter is a feeling (hungriness, fullness...) and the second one is a value. By introspection I call the corresponding method to get the value for this feeling. The behaviour is the same in both cases, just calling an accessor and compare to a value.

In my case I don't think it makes domain language less precise, I think is just reusability of the step functions.

[mike-rogers]

@javierseixas for this particular case you can simplify your @Whens into:

@When("^its ([a-z]+) is (?:de|in)creased to (\\d+)$")

That should match both (I removed the apostrophe due to general pedantry 😉). If you're unfamiliar with the (?:stuff) notation it's called a 'passive' or 'non-collecting' group, and the pipe character (|) is an 'or', so you could read that as "match a string that starts with 'in' or 'de' and ends with 'creases', but don't collect it into an argument".

Disclaimer: I haven't tried this but afaict there's no reason it shouldn't work.

[javierseixas]

@mike-rogers thanks for your idea. I think is a good way of doing what I need.
In other hand, right now I don't have any other idea that could require to define more than one steps, so I close this issue for now.
Thanks!

[aslakhellesoy]

Good job guys. Classic XY problem :-)

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