In Cucumber, is it possible to programmatically get the current step being executed?

Question

Scenario: As a user, I want to login to the system
Given I am on my website
When I enter valid credentials
Then I am taken to the home page

The sce

Answer 1

I solved it using @BeforeStep & @AfterStep. It is a bit hacky, so use it only if you are know what you are doing.

public class StepDefBeginEndLogger {

private int currentStepDefIndex = 0;

@BeforeStep
public void doSomethingBeforeStep(Scenario scenario) throws Exception {

    Field f = scenario.getClass().getDeclaredField("testCase");
    f.setAccessible(true);
    TestCase r = (TestCase) f.get(scenario);

    //You need to filter out before/after hooks
    List<PickleStepTestStep> stepDefs = r.getTestSteps()
            .stream()
            .filter(x -> x instanceof PickleStepTestStep)
            .map(x -> (PickleStepTestStep) x)
            .collect(Collectors.toList());


    //This object now holds the information about the current step definition
    //If you are using pico container 
    //just store it somewhere in your world state object 
    //and to make it available in your step definitions.
    PickleStepTestStep currentStepDef = stepDefs
            .get(currentStepDefIndex);
}

@AfterStep
public void doSomethingAfterStep(Scenario scenario) {
    currentStepDefIndex += 1;
}

}

Answer 2

Just leaving this here for future reference...

The current version of Cucumber (4.2.5) has the BeforeStep hook, but only provides access to the current running scenario.

What I did to extract the current step, was using reflection to access the steps within that scenario;

@BeforeStep
public void beforeStep(Scenario scn) throws Exception {
    currentStepIndex++;

    Field testCaseField = scn.getClass().getDeclaredField("testCase");
    testCaseField.setAccessible(true);

    TestCase tc = (TestCase) testCaseField.get(scn);
    Field testSteps = tc.getClass().getDeclaredField("testSteps");
    testSteps.setAccessible(true);

    List<TestStep> teststeps = tc.getTestSteps();
    try {
        PickleStepTestStep pts = (PickleStepTestStep) teststeps.get(currentStepIndex);
        getLog().info("########################");
        getLog().info("##########STEP##########");
        getLog().info(pts.getStepText());
        getLog().info("########################");
        currentStepIndex++;
    } catch (Exception ignore) {
    }
}

The only downside is, that you require a int currentStepIndex at class level, and need to add 1 with every @Before or @BeforeStep.

BE WARNED that the use of this type of reflection may fail to work in future releases of Cucumber, as the Cucumber team can decide to change their internals.

Answer 3

Here's an update to handle the framework changes. The "testCase" field is hidden under the "delegate". I got this working with io.cucumber.java version 5.7.0

public String getStepText(io.cucumber.java.Scenario scenario){      
    String  currentStepDescr = null;

    //value currentStepDefIndex is tracked in the another class
    int currentStepDefIndex = OtherClass.getStepIndex();

    Field f = scenario.getClass().getDeclaredField("delegate");
    f.setAccessible(true);
    TestCaseState tcs = (TestCaseState) f.get(scenario);

    Field f2 = tcs.getClass().getDeclaredField("testCase");
    f2.setAccessible(true);
    TestCase r = (TestCase) f2.get(tcs);

        List<PickleStepTestStep> stepDefs = r.getTestSteps()
                .stream()
                .filter(x -> x instanceof PickleStepTestStep)
                .map(x -> (PickleStepTestStep) x)
                .collect(Collectors.toList());


        PickleStepTestStep currentStepDef = stepDefs
                .get(currentStepDefIndex);
        currentStepDescr = currentStepDef.getStep().getText();
        currentStepDefIndex += 1;
        OtherClass.setStepIndex(currentStepDefIndex);
         return currentStepDescr ;
       }

Below are the dependencies in my pom.xml

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.cucumber/cucumber-core -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>io.cucumber</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-core</artifactId>
            <version>5.7.0</version>
        </dependency>


        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.cucumber/cucumber-testng -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>io.cucumber</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-testng</artifactId>
            <version>5.7.0</version>
        </dependency>


        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.cucumber/cucumber-java -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>io.cucumber</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-java</artifactId>
            <version>5.7.0</version>
        </dependency>


        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.cucumber/cucumber-jvm-deps -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>io.cucumber</groupId>
            <artifactId>cucumber-jvm-deps</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.6</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

Answer 4

I had this same question. I attempted to use rs79's answer but either I don't know what I'm actually doing with it or it doesn't work. Java gives me an "AmbiguousStepDefinitionException" or something like that. So I did it a different way. It takes a little work if you have a slew of step definitions but it works and is pretty simple:

@Then(value = "^The page should navigate to url \"([^\"])\"$", timeout = MAX_TIME)
public void the_page_should_navigate_to_url(String url) {
    //below I use a custom class with a static method setStepName() which just sets a string field in the class
    CustomClass.setStepName("Then The page should navigate to url " + url);
    //Assert
}

Now you have access to the step name without needing any kind of complicated tool. Just use a get method to access the step variable in your custom class. Hope that helps.

Answer 5

These hooks will help:

@BeforeStep
public void beforeStep(Scenario scenario){
  System.out.println(scenario.toString());
}

@AfterStep
public void afterStep(Scenario scenario){
  System.out.println(scenario.toString());
}

Answer 6

Being a newbie m not allowed to comment so here is some info, assuming you are using cucumber-jvm.

Short answer, No, Cucumber by itself doesnt have the option to read step names. You could use the method names to identify what was called.

Also, @BEFORE STEP / @AFTER STEP tags are not yet available so you will have to define the call for each step.

https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/pull/838#issuecomment-234110573

or the testing framework like junit or testng could let you access the execution details - something like this: http://junit.org/junit4/javadoc/4.12/org/junit/rules/TestWatcher.html.

And if you really need the step names only for reporting purposes, you can simply parse the xml report that the testing framework generates.