Datafile-backed Cucumber Test Example in Katalon Studio

Product Forums Katalon Studio
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I have made a Github project:

Problem to solve

A topic in the Katalon User Forum raised a question to me: how can I create a Katalon Studio project which is Behavior-Driven by Cucumber, and uses an external data file as fixture?

Katalon Document “BDD Testing Framework (Cucumber integration)” gives us a good example of Cucumber test in Katalon Studio. I went through it, and found it does not tell us how to utilise external data sources (CSV, Excel, DB) as described in another Katalon document “Run Test Case with an external data source”. I realised that we need a missing document: How to run Cucumber Test with an external data source .

Solution

A Cucumber Step Definition in Katalon Studio is essentially an ordinary Groovy script, just like a Katalon Keyword. You can write a Cucumber Step Definition so that it refers to an external data source.

But how? A Step Definition can call any Katalon API including com.kms.katalon.core.testdata.TestDataFactory.findTestData(String testDataID) . Therefore it can instanciate an com.kms.katalon.core.testdata.TestData object which wraps external data sources, such as CSV, Excel and DB.

Description

I will follow the Cucumber project described in the doc “BDD Testing Framework (Cucumber integration)” while I will modify it a little bit.

Import an CSV file to Test Data

I created a CSV file that contains 2 rows of credentials. Each row contains 4 columns: username, password, email address, phone number. The username column is supposed to be unique, which will identify each rows. I imported this CSV file to a Test Data named HealthcareCredentials . The following picture shows what I have got.

HealthcareCredentials

Write a Cucumber Feature

I created a Cucumber Feature Include/features/healthcare/CuraLogin.feature . It is 90% similar to the original but is different at a critical point. The original has the following code:

    ...
    And I enter username <username> and password <password>
    ...
    Examples: 
      | username | password           |
      | John Doe | ThisIsNotAPassword |

Please note that the original Feature has the values of username and password hard-coded in the Feature file. On the other hand, my code looks like this:

    ...
    And I enter username <username> and will retrieve password from Test Data
    ...
    Examples: 
      | username |
      | John Doe |

My Feature specifies the username value only, and the associated Step Definition will internally retrieve password from the external Test Data HealthcareCredentials .

Write a Step Definition

I wrote a Cucumber Step Definition Include/scripts/groovy/com/kazurayam/ks/bdd/example/HealthcareStepDefinition.groovy .

It starts with a constructor:

package com.kazurayam.ks.bdd.example

import static com.kms.katalon.core.testdata.TestDataFactory.findTestData
import com.kms.katalon.core.testdata.TestData
...
class HealthcareStepDefinition {

	// custom class that provides accessor methods
	private final Credentials credentials

	private static final String DATA_FILE_NAME = "HealthcareCredentials"

	HealthcareStepDefinition() {
		TestData td = findTestData(DATA_FILE_NAME)
		credentials = new Credentials(td)
	}

...

The HealthcareStepDefinition class used a custom Groovy class Keywords/com/kazurayam/ks/bdd/example/Credentials.groovy. The Credentials class wraps the TestData object which indirectly wraps the external CSV data.

The step definition calls lookupPasswordOf(username) method of the credentials object to retrieve the password data of the given username out of the TestData; like this:

	@And("I enter a valid credential of (.*) and will retrieve password from Test Data")
	def I_enter_valid_credential(String username) {
		String password = credentials.lookupPasswordOf(username)
		if (password != null) {
			WebUI.setText(findTestObject('Page_CURA Healthcare Service/input_userName'), username)
			WebUI.setText(findTestObject('Page_CURA Healthcare Service/input_password'), password)
		} else {
			throw new IllegalStateException("usernamae ${username} is not found")
		}
	}

This is the way how my Cucumber test uses the Katalon’s Test Data feature. No mystery. It is simple enough.

How to run the Cucumber demo

  1. In Katalon Studio while you have this project opened, open Test Cases/bdd/runCuraLoginFeatures and just run it.
  2. The test will create a folder CucumberReports/healthcare/ where test reports in HTML, XML and json.

I suppose you will be impressed that the HTML report by Cucumber is very readable.

Please note that the reports can be in any spoken languages: e.g, English, Russian and Japanese as follows.

trilingual

Plain Old Katalon Test Cases/Test Suite that do the same

I made a set of Katalon Test Cases/Test Suite that do the same test senario as the Cucumber demo.

These plain-old Katalon Test Cases refers to the Test Data HealthcareCredentails just in the same way as the Cucumber Step Defintion does. In fact, there is very little difference between them in terms of test fixture management.

You can run Test Suites/plainKS/TS_plan to see how these Test Cases ran. No different from the Cucumber test.