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Early Praise for Cucumber Recipes
With Cucumber Recipes you feel like the authors are right there with you, offering
you advice, showing you hidden gems, or gently chastising you for things you
know you shouldn’t be doing. From general advice about taming unruly test suites
or scaling out across multiple servers, to craziness like testing embedded Arduino
hardware projects, they manage to cover an enormous amount of ground in a
small space. Prepare for a fun and informative ride.
➤ Dan North
Originator of BDD and author of the RSpec story runner (Cucumber’s
predecessor)
There are many cookbooks but very few “chef books.” Cucumber Recipes is inspiring
enough to qualify as a chef book. If there’s a will and a desire to use Cucumber
in the process, Cucumber Recipes will more than likely show you a way...or many
ways! From the basic to the esoteric, there’s something for everyone in Cucumber
Recipes.
➤ Michael Larsen
Senior quality assurance engineer, SocialText
It is good to see that a free tool like Cucumber has been able to build up a com-
munity that treats BDD as its own child and carries it to nearly every possible
platform and technology. This book provides a closer look at the details.
➤ Gáspár Nagy
Developer coach at TechTalk, creator of SpecFlow
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If you’re automating tests of any kind using Cucumber, in any language, against
any type of software, you need this cookbook. Its recipes will help you write useful,
easily maintained tests for even the most puzzling scenarios. Like all good cook-
books, it teaches good techniques and principles that will help you improve all
your tests. Best of all, you can actually code the examples yourself, and learn by
doing.
➤ Lisa Crispin
Co-author, Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams
Cucumber Recipes has testing solutions for a variety of platforms. It is a powerful
book that gives us useful tips to use BDD in our chosen environment. To realize
the power of BDD, Cucumber Recipes is a must on every software test engineer’s
table.
➤ Kavitha Naveen
Senior lead—quality engineering
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Cucumber Recipes
Automate Anything with BDD Tools and Techniques
Ian Dees
Matt Wynne
Aslak Hellesøy
The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Dallas, Texas • Raleigh, North Carolina
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Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products
are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and The Pragmatic
Programmers, LLC was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in
initial capital letters or in all capitals. The Pragmatic Starter Kit, The Pragmatic Programmer,
Pragmatic Programming, Pragmatic Bookshelf, PragProg and the linking g device are trade-
marks of The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC.
Every precaution was taken in the preparation of this book. However, the publisher assumes
no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages that may result from the use of
information (including program listings) contained herein.
Our Pragmatic courses, workshops, and other products can help you and your team create
better software and have more fun. For more information, as well as the latest Pragmatic
titles, please visit us at http://pragprog.com.
The team that produced this book includes:
Jackie Carter (editor)
Potomac Indexing, LLC (indexer)
Kim Wimpsett (copyeditor)
David J Kelly (typesetter)
Janet Furlow (producer)
Juliet Benda (rights)
Ellie Callahan (support)
Copyright © 2013 The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN-13: 978-1-937785-01-7
Encoded using the finest acid-free high-entropy binary digits.
Book version: P1.0—February 2013
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Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
1. Cucumber Techniques . . . . . . . . . . 1
Recipe 1. Compare and Transform Tables of Data 2
Recipe 2. Generate an RTF Report with a Custom Formatter 7
Recipe 3. Run Slow Setup/Teardown Code with Global
Hooks 13
Recipe 4. Refactor to Extract Your Own Application Driver
DSL 18
Recipe 5. Define Steps as Regular Ruby Methods 22
Recipe 6. Compare Images 27
Recipe 7. Test Across Multiple Cores 33
Recipe 8. Test Across Multiple Machines with SSH 36
Recipe 9. Run Your Features Automatically with Guard and
Growl 41
Recipe 10. Add Cucumber to Your Continuous Integration
Server 47
Recipe 11. Publish Your Documentation on Relish 55
Recipe 12. Test Through Multiple Interfaces Using Worlds 61
Recipe 13. Manipulate Time 67
Recipe 14. Drive Cucumber’s Wire Protocol 72
Recipe 15. Implement a Wire Protocol Listener 75
2. Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Recipe 16. Use Cucumber Directly with JRuby 84
Recipe 17. Use Cucumber with Java via Cucumber-JVM 87
Recipe 18. Drive a Spring + Hibernate Project 92
Recipe 19. Test a Grails App Using grails-cucumber 99
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Contents • vi
Recipe 20. Test Scala Code 104
Recipe 21. Test Clojure Code 109
Recipe 22. Drive a Swing Interface with FEST 111
3. .NET and Windows . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Recipe 23. Get Good Text Output on Windows 118
Recipe 24. Test .NET Code with SpecFlow 124
Recipe 25. Drive a Windows App Using White 130
Recipe 26. Test Windows GUIs with AutoIt 135
Recipe 27. Test on Windows Phone 139
4. Mobile and Web . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Recipe 28. Test on iOS Using Frank 148
Recipe 29. Test Android Apps with Calabash 153
Recipe 30. Parse HTML Tables 160
Recipe 31. Drive JavaScript/CoffeeScript Using
Cucumber-JS 164
Recipe 32. Test a Web App Using Watir 168
Recipe 33. Test a PHP App with cuke4php 173
Recipe 34. Play Back Canned Network Data Using VCR 181
Recipe 35. Drive a Flash App Using Cuke4AS3 185
Recipe 36. Monitor a Web Service Using Nagios and
Cucumber 195
5. Other Languages and Platforms. . . . . . . . 201
Recipe 37. Drive a Mac GUI Using AppleScript and System
Events 202
Recipe 38. Drive a Mac GUI Using MacRuby and AXElements 209
Recipe 39. Test Python Code Using Lettuce 214
Recipe 40. Test Erlang Code 217
Recipe 41. Test Lua Code Using cucumber-lua 221
Recipe 42. Test a GUI on Linux, Mac, or Windows with Sikuli 225
Recipe 43. Test an Arduino Project Using Serial 230
A1. RSpec Expectations . . . . . . . . . . 237
A1.1 Basics 237
A1.2 Custom Matchers 238
A1.3 Alternatives 239
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
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Foreword
There was a time when one could analyze all that a program needed to do
and then write the program that met that need. This stopped being a winning
strategy when computers got big enough and fast enough to hold a description
of the problem, not just the solution.
I embraced this change that went by the name of object-oriented programming.
The advice was to divide large programs into parts that captured natural
diversity. Then we were to program the parts to ask other parts for results
without saying exactly how these results were to be achieved. This sounded
simple. We no longer had to think everything through all of the time. Then,
when we discovered one more case late in development, we were thankful we
kept that complexity at a distance.
It was a good plan, but it turned out to be not quite that simple. Not only was
there more than one way to chop up a program into parts, there was no easy
way to tell which approach was going to prove to be leveraged when unforeseen
needs surfaced, as they always do.
Agile
We forged ahead. We found dozens of techniques that helped keep track of
what we had done, where we were going, and, especially, how to say “yes, we
can” when asked to do something never once mentioned until our programs
were used. When we say Agile today, we’re distinguishing ourselves from the
days when we would resist change even if it meant finishing a program that
wouldn’t be used.
We asked our pioneers to experiment. We asked that they try new things and
share with each other how they worked out. We asked our best developers to
think about these new problems: where have we been, where are we going,
and how will we know when we get there?
This book carries that tradition forward. Let me explain how.
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Foreword • viii
Patterns
A program is a mathematical object that follows precise rules. This stops
being important when we can no longer fully analyze our problems as we
might a proof. Our progress toward Agile accelerated when we started cata-
loging solutions rather than deriving new ones from scratch each time they
occurred.
A recurring pattern became an object of interest. A recurring problem in a
context and a solution known to work—this is something worth sharing.
When we started naming and documenting these patterns, we created a liter-
ature that had not yet existed. Practical problem solving was respected.
Well-worn solutions were judged valuable...more valuable even than the most
innovative ideas.
Although Cucumber offers a new and innovative way of pushing Agile forward,
there is no reason for every Cucumber user to rediscover the contents of this
book. The solutions come from many, for sure. But the simple existence of
this catalog will raise our collective competence as we come to know of solu-
tions whether we need them right now or not.
This book covers lots of ground. Some of it you will use immediately; other
parts you will later. However, you will be served well to know the range of
problems already solved.
Platforms
We appreciate how computers become more powerful each year. We hardly
think of them as computers anymore. But they still need to be programmed.
When we say Agile means “yes, we can,” we make a promise that becomes
more difficult as capabilities proliferate. And each capability has its own
constituents that want our attention.
Cucumber makes much of artifacts that can be shared across disciplines. A
developer and a business analyst will bring different skills to a project. But
if they are to coordinate their work, there must be some things they share.
Cucumber meets that need.
This same distance from implementation allows Cucumber to straddle today’s
diverse implementation technologies. As our customers come to know many
platforms, they expect us to know them too. As developers we begin to feel
new pressure. Each platform has its quirks. That is where this book excels.
As you are pressed into delivery on new platforms, you can bring Cucumber
with you. But how do you hook it up? Read how here.
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