Passing tags in Runner Class Dynamically

[Goku768collab]

Hey Everyone,

I am trying to execute my runner class by accepting tags from a .properties file. However I am unable to do this as cucumber thinks I haven't specified any tags and runs all my tests. I have given below the Runner class and configuration reader class which reads the values from properties.file. How can I resolve this?

Runner class:

import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import io.cucumber.junit.Cucumber;
import io.cucumber.junit.CucumberOptions;
import //ConfigurationReader;

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@CucumberOptions(
features = "src/test/resources/features",
glue = "//my Stepdefenitions",
dryRun = false,

)
public class CukesRunner {
static {
String tags = ConfigurationReader.getTags();
if (tags != null && !tags.isEmpty()) {
System.setProperty("cucumber.filter.tags", tags);
}
}
}

Configuration Reader:
public class ConfigurationReader {
private static Properties properties = new Properties();

static {
    loadProperties();
}

private static void loadProperties() {
    String configFilePath = System.getProperty("config.file", "configuration.properties");

    try (InputStream file = new FileInputStream(configFilePath)) {
        properties.load(file);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        System.out.println("Error occurred while reading configuration file: " + configFilePath);
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

public static String getProperty(String key) {
    return properties.getProperty(key);
}

public static String getTags() {
    return properties.getProperty("tags", "@test");
}

}

[mpkorstanje]

You're currently using cucumber-junit which integrates Cucumber with JUnit 4. To make use of System.setProperty you have to ensure that it called before Cucumber reads the properties. But with JUnit 4 that is quite hard to do.

Instead if you upgrade to JUnit 5, and switch to using the cucumber-junit-platform-engine in combination with the junit-platform-suite then you can use the @ConfigurationParametersResource annotation to configure the property file from which the tags should be read.

You can find a minimal example project in the cucumber-java-skeleton.

---

Alternatively, you can use a Maven Profile (or the Gradle equivalent) to set cucumber.filter.tags before the test run starts.

[Goku768collab]

If I use a maven profile to pass the tags, wouldn't it mean people who want to run this will have to go inside the pom.xml rather than just editing a file? I am trying to minimalize user interaction with code

[mpkorstanje]

It depends. If you have predefined all the relevant profiles then users can select a profile with mvn -Pprofile-name. Or if you want users to edit a file, you could use the cucumber.properties file. https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/tree/main/cucumber-core#properties-environment-variables-system-options