Accessing global variables in cucumber-jvm

[Rakesh]

Hi,

I'm experimenting with cucumber-jvm as a way to write selenium tests.

The issue I have is that I want to start the browser once per test suite, not per test.

The only way I can think of doing this is to have some static class instantiating the browser and then my step definitions using this class to get a reference to the driver.

Seems ugly and wanted to know if there was a better way to achieve this?

Thanks

Rakesh

[aslak hellesoy]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Rakesh <rakesh.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm experimenting with cucumber-jvm as a way to write selenium tests.
> The issue I have is that I want to start the browser once per test suite,
> not per test.
> The only way I can think of doing this is to have some static class

What's a static class?

> instantiating the browser and then my step definitions using this class to
> get a reference to the driver.
> Seems ugly and wanted to know if there was a better way to achieve this?

I would recommend dependency injection. See
https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/tree/master/examples/java-webbit-websockets-selenium
I just modified it a little to do what you're asking for:
https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/commit/ed160d3070bcced399457cd171cfc59ce991f466

HTH,
Aslak

> Thanks
> Rakesh
>
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[Robert]

Aslak,

Thanks for sharing!! I've been wondering about this as well, recently.

[Rakesh]

Hi,

I wanted to resurrect this thread because I am not sure its still valid. Some threads recently have just confused me even more about state between tests.

I have cucumber-jvm running with picocontainer wiring up my step defs before each scenario and thats fine.

However, I need to talk to the database to clean up and insert test data too. Problem is instantiating a connection to the database takes time and I'd rather set up a pool once and then have the stepdefs ask for a connection.

How can I achieve this?

Rakesh

[Aaron VonderHaar]

On Apr 16, 2012 2:51 PM, "Rakesh" <rakesh.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>

> I wanted to resurrect this thread because I am not sure its still valid. Some threads recently have just confused me even more about state between tests.
>
> I have cucumber-jvm running with picocontainer wiring up my step defs before each scenario and thats fine.
>
> However, I need to talk to the database to clean up and insert test data too. Problem is instantiating a connection to the database takes time and I'd rather set up a pool once and then have the stepdefs ask for a connection.
>
> How can I achieve this?

Create a connection pool class that manages/pools/caches the connections in the way you want, and then inject an instance of that into your stepdefs instead of directly injecting a database or connection object.

Cheers,
--Aaron V.

[Rakesh]

Hi,

well the only way I can think of doing it is by creating a global singleton along the lines of:

Database.getConnection()

The getConnection method would check to see if the pool already exists and create it if not otherwise return a connection.

Is that the only way?

Rakesh

[Aaron VonderHaar]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Rakesh <rakesh.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>

> well the only way I can think of doing it is by creating a global singleton
> along the lines of:
>
> Database.getConnection()
>
> The getConnection method would check to see if the pool already exists and
> create it if not otherwise return a connection.
>
> Is that the only way?

Not knowing your specific case, I'd imagine it'd go something like this:

Make a ConnectionPool class...

public class ConnectionPool {
private Connection conn;
public Connection getConnection() {
if (conn == null) {
conn = /* create the connection however you want */;
}
return conn;
}
}

Then inject it in your stepdefs w/ PicoContainer...

public class MyStepdefs {
private final ConnectionPool pool;

public MyStepdefs(ConnectionPool pool) {
this.pool = pool;
}

//... steps that use pool.getConnection() to get a connection ...
}

--
--Aaron V.
[ http://github.com/avh4 ]

[Rakesh]

Hi Aaron,

nope, that will give me the behaviour of creating a connection per scenario which is what I am trying to avoid. I think I have no choice but to resort to statics:

public class MyConnectionPool {

   private static List<Connection> connections;

   public Connection getConnection() {

      if(connections.size() > 0 {

         // return one of the connections

      } else {

         // intitalise pool with some connections

      }

   }

As you can see, there's a fair bit of logic required. I'll probably have to Use C3P0 and wrap it.

Rakesh