How to implement different data for cucumber scenarios based on environment

Question

I have an issue with executing the cucumber-jvm scenarios in different environments. Data that is incorporated in the feature files for scenarios belongs to one environment. To execute the scenarios in different environemnts, I need to update the data in the features files as per the environment to be executed.

for example, in the following scenario, i have the search criteria included in the feature file. search criteria is valid for lets say QA env.

Scenario: search user with valid criteria

Given user navigated to login page
And clicked search link
When searched by providing search criteria
|fname1  |lname1  |address1|address2|city1|state1|58884|
Then verify the results displayed 

it works fine in QA env. But to execute the same scenario in other environments (UAT,stage..), i need to modify search criteria in feature files as per the data in those environments.

I'm thinking about maintaing the data for scenarios in properties file for different environments and read it based on the execution environment.

if data is in properties file, scenario will look like below. Instead of the search criteria, I will give propertyName:

Scenario: search user with valid criteria

Given user navigated to login page
And clicked search link
When searched by providing search criteria
|validSearchCriteria|
Then verify the results displayed 

Is there any other way I could maintain the data for scenarios for all environments and use it as per the environment the scenario is getting executed? please let me know.

Thanks

Answer 1

I understand the problem, but I don't quite understand the example, so allow me to provide my own example to illustrate how this can be solved.

Let's assume we test a library management software and that in our development environment our test data have 3 books by Leo Tolstoy.

We can have test case like this:

Scenario: Search by Author
    When I search for "Leo Tolstoy" books
    Then I should get result "3"

Now let's assume we create our QA test environment and in that environment we have 5 books by Leo Tolstoy. The question is how do we modify our test case so it works in both environments?

One way is to use tags. For example:

@dev_env
Scenario: Search by Author
    When I search for "Leo Tolstoy" books
    Then I should get result "3"

@qa_env
Scenario: Search by Author
    When I search for "Leo Tolstoy" books
    Then I should get result "5"

The problem here is that we have lots of code duplication. We can solve that by using Scenario Outline, like this:

Scenario Outline: Search by Author
    When I search for "Leo Tolstoy"
    Then I should see "<number_of_books>" books

@qa_env
Examples:
| number_of_books |
| 5               |

@dev_env
Examples:
| number_of_books |
| 3               |

Now when you execute the tests, you should use @dev_env tag in dev environment and @qa_env in QA environment.

I'll be glad to hear some other ways to solve this problem.