Cucumber and JUnit Testing [closed]

Question

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.

---

We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.

Closed 3 years ago.

Improve this question

We are building a new application and we are considering what testing frameworks to use. There are two types of testing we want to do:

1. Test all the possible logical pathways the execution thread can take (so this is more a technical/developer level testing strategy). We can do this by creating a program to combinatorially generate all the required test data.
2. Test only the required business use cases for the application (so this is more orientated towards the QAs and BAs).

My thinking is that for (1) we use JUnit and for (2) we use Cucumber. I have no experience in Cucumber. My question is can (1) and (2) be achieved with one framework like Cucumber or is it best practice to separate them out as I describe above.

Answer 1

I'd tend to agree with your assessment that JUnit (or another unit testing framework) is best suited for category 1 while Cucumber is well suited for category 2. Cucumber is a framework for writing natural language (more or less) specifications (in the Gherkin language), and as such its strength really lies in writing executable application specifications.

For purely technical testing, in order to enforce maximum test coverage, you're really only making it more difficult for yourself by writing the tests in a business-level language (Gherkin/Cucumber). Writing the tests with e.g. JUnit will involve much less friction.

For a good understanding of Cucumber and its role in the development chain, in comparison to other (BDD) tools (e.g. RSpec), I'd suggest reading The RSpec Book. In particular, it recommends RSpec, which is more similar to xUnit frameworks, for testing isolated parts of your system, and Cucumber for testing your application as a whole. This book is especially valuable in that it is authored by the creators of said tools (RSpec/Cucumber), so you get to know how these tools are intended to be used.

An example Cucumber specification, the test itself is within the Scenario block:

Feature: Serve coffee
    Coffee should not be served until paid for
    Coffee should not be served until the button has been pressed
    If there is no coffee left then money should be refunded

Scenario: Buy last coffee
    Given there are 1 coffees left in the machine
    And I have deposited 1$
    When I press the coffee button
    Then I should be served a coffee