Is Page Object Model linking compatible with Cucumber's Gherkin?

Question

With Test Automation's Page Object Model we link pages together like this:

WebDriver driver = new WebDriver() HomePage homePage = new HomePage(driver); LoginPage loginPage = homePage.GoToLoginPage(); WelcomePage welcomePage = loginPage.Login(); etc etc 

The big benefit of this is if the Devs change the homepage so it no longer links to the loginpage, I can update my homepage class and see all the tests I need to update (with errors) before even running a test.

With Gherkin however, each row above would form a separate 'Step' and therefore a separate method. Therefore, how can this linking be done?

Is the only way to place instances of the page object classes (e.g. homePage, loginPage, etc) into a cross gherkin statement persistant store (e.g. like a specflow POCO or 'World')?

Answer 1

Ok so having asked numerous dev and test automation experts, it seems the solution is to continue with linking [e.g. WelcomePage welcomePage = loginPage.loginWithValidUser(validUser)] is the way to go.

To persist instance of page objects across steps (e.g. welcomePage in example above) you can use dependency injection tool (creating functionality similar to World extensions in Ruby's implementation of cucumber).

Here is more info: https://cukes.info/docs/reference/java-di

However, most projects will benefit from a Dependency Injection module to organize your code better and to share state between Step Definitions.

More info from SpecFlow (the .net official cucumber implementation):

http://specflow.org/getting-started/beyond-the-basics/

And finally, I have created a whole blog around this area that might help people out, since gherkin/page object interaction is a subject of great interest to me:

http://www.seligmanventures.com/dev-blog/test-automation-page-object-model-with-gherkin