Running Cucumber tests on different environments

Question

I'm using Cucumber and Capybara for my automated front end tests.

I have two environments that I would like to run my tests on. One is a staging environment, and the other is the production environment.

Currently, I have my tests written to access staging directly.

visit('https://staging.somewhere.com')

I would like to re-use the tests in production (https://production.somewhere.com).

Would it be possible to store the URL in a variable in my step definitions

visit(domain)

and define domain using an environment variable called form the command line? Like

$> bundle exec cucumber features DOMAIN=staging

if I want to point the tests to my staging environment, or

$> bundle exec cucumber features DOMAIN=production

if I want it to run in production?

How do I go about setting this up? I'm fairly new to Ruby and I've been searching the forums for a straight forward information but could not find any. Let me know if I can provide more information. Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

In the project's config file, create a config.yml file

---
staging:
    :url: https://staging.somewhere.com

production:
    :url: https://production.somewhere.com

Then extra colon in the yml file allows the hash key to be called as a symbol.

In your support/env.rb file, add the following

require 'yaml'    

ENV['TEST_ENV'] ||= 'staging'
project_root = File.expand_path('../..', __FILE__)
$BASE_URL = YAML.load_file(project_root + "/config/config.yml")[ENV['TEST_ENV']][:url]

This will default to the staging environment unless you override the TEST_ENV. Then, from your step or hook, you can call:

visit($BASE_URL)

or you might need :/

visit "#{$BASE_URL}"

This will allow you to use

bundle exec cucumber features TEST_ENV=production