JarCastingcucumber-variables 
A library for developers writing cucumber-jvm steps.
It allows writing cucumber steps that can reference set up test data and other variables without hard-coding values into your feature files.
For example:
Given a user
When I go to the profile page for the user id
Then the email field has the value of the user email
And the status field has the value of 'Current'
In this case, the Given a user step has set the variables user id and user email. The matching steps then match the user id to the id, the user email to the email address and 'Current' to that string, minus the quotes.
This allows writing of flexible steps that can interchange literals and variables.
Mostly at the moment this is used by the geb-cucumber project. See more examples there and in the build output at https://travis-ci.org/tomdcc/geb-cucumber.
Installation
Geb Cucumber is deployed to Maven Central and can be added to your project as a dependency using the following coordinates:
groupId: io.jdev.cucumber
artifactId: cucumber-variables
version: 0.5
Or just download the jar from http://search.maven.org/ if your build system is a bit less connected.
Usage
cucumber-variables sets up a variable scope for each cucumber scenario. If you are using the cucumber-java or cucumber-groovy backends, you can include the built-in steps that are bundled with cucumber-variables and they will take care of setting up the scope in each scenario. To do this, add classpath:io.jdev.cucumber.variables.java.en for Java or classpath:io.jdev.cucumber.variables.groovy.en for Groovy to your cucumber glue directory list.
If you aren't using one of those cucumber-jvm backends, you'll need to set the variable scope up yourself. In a before hook, call VariableScope.getCurrentScope(scenario, decoder), passing in the variable decoder that you would like to use (currently there is only an EnglishDecoder). The call will return a scope object that you can then store variables in and query later.
VariableScope scope = VariableScope.getCurrentScope(scenario, new EnglishDcoder());
scope.storeVariable("customer id", 1234);
scope.storeVariable("customer id", 5678);
assertEquals(1234, scope.decodeVariable("the 1st customer id"));
assertEquals(5678, scope.decodeVariable("the 2nd customer id"));
assertEquals(5678, scope.decodeVariable("the customer id")); // without index, will return most recent
cucumber-variables will also decode literals that look like strings or regular expression patterns for you:
assertEquals("1234", scope.decodeVariable("'1234'"));
Pattern p = scope.decodeVariable("/\\d+/");
assertTrue(p.matcher("1234").matches());
This lets you mix and match references to stored values and literals in your cucumber tests, making writing more generic steps easy.
cucumber-variables can also return values nested inside maps or objects:
Map customer = Collections.singletonMap("firstName", "Tom");
scope.storeVariable("most recent customer", customer);
assertEquals("Tom", scope.decodeVariable("most recent customer first name"));
Product p = new Product();
p.setReferenceId(1234);
scope.storeVariable("new product", p);
assertEquals(1234, scope.decodeVariable("new product reference id"));
Languages
Currently only English is supported. Contributions of other language decoders are very welcome.
Changelog
Version 0.5
- Resolve values from nested variables
Version 0.4
- More flexible string literals
Version 0.3
- Regex literals
Version 0.2
- Support for cucumber-groovy steps
Version 0.1
- Initial version
- Support for cucumber-java steps