Cucumber Framework: What is Cucumber Testing Tool?

By : Thomas Hamilton Thomas Hamilton
Hours Updated

What is Cucumber?

Cucumber is a testing tool that supports Behavior Driven Development (BDD). It offers a way to write tests that anybody can understand, regardless of their technical knowledge. In BDD, users (business analysts, product owners) first write scenarios or acceptance tests that describe the behavior of the system from the customer’s perspective, for review and sign-off by the product owners before developers write their codes. Cucumber framework uses Ruby programming language.

Cucumber Framework

Cucumber Framework

In this Cucumber framework tutorial, you will learn:

How BDD works in Cucumber Automation?

Consider you are assigned to create Funds Transfer module in a Net Banking application.

There are multiple ways to test it in Cucumber Testing framework

  1. Fund Transfer should take place if there is enough balance in source account
  2. Fund Transfer should take place if the destination a/c details are correct
  3. Fund Transfer should take place if transaction password / rsa code / security authentication for the transaction entered by user is correct
  4. Fund Transfer should take place even if it’s a Bank Holiday
  5. Fund Transfer should take place on a future date as set by the account holder

The Test Scenario become more elaborate and complex as we consider additional features like transfer amount X for an interval Y days/months , stop schedule transfer when the total amount reaches Z , and so on

The general tendency of developers is to develop features and write test code later. As, evident in above case, Test Case development for this case is complex and developer will put off Testing till release , at which point he will do quick but ineffective testing.

To overcome this issue, Cucumber BDD (Behavior Driven Development), was conceived. It makes the entire testing process easy for a developer

In Cucumber BDD, whatever you write must go into Given-When-Then steps. Lets consider the same example above in BDD

Given that a fund transfer module in net banking application has been developed
And I am accessing it with proper authentication
WhenI shall transfer with enough balance in my source account
Or I shall transfer on a Bank Holiday
Or I shall transfer on a future date
And destination a/c details are correct
And transaction password/RSA code/security authentication for the transaction is correct
And press or click send button
Then amount must be transferred
And the event will be logged in log file

Isn’t it easy to write and read and understand? It covers all possible test cases for the fund transfer module and can be easily modified to accommodate more. Also, it more like writing documentation for the fund transfer module.

Advantages of Cucumber Software

  1. It is helpful to involve business stakeholders who can’t easily read code
  2. Cucumber Testing tool focuses on end-user experience
  3. Style of writing tests allow for easier reuse of code in the tests
  4. Quick and easy set up and execution
  5. Cucumber test tool is an efficient tool for testing

Cucumber vs Selenium vs ALM

In this section, we will study the difference between Cucumber, Selenium and UFT.

Cucumber HP ALM (QTP) Selenium
  • Cucumber software is free
  • QTP is expensive
  • It is free
  • Cucumber software is a behavior driven development tool
  • It’s a Functional Automation Tool
  • It’s a Functional and Performance ( Selenium Grid) test tool
  • Plugin in Cucumber testing tool works faster
  • Plugin are slower compare to Cucumber and Selenium
  • Plugins are slower than cucumber
  • Cucumber Framework supports other language as well beyond Ruby like Java, Scala, Groovy etc.
  • QTP supports only VB script
  • Selenium supports Java, .Net and many other languages
  • Writing automation steps are joint effort of testers and developer
  • In QTP only tester writes automation steps
  • Like Cucumber Tool, writing automation steps are joint effort of testers and developer
  • Cucumber testing tool supports only web environment
  • Support web, desktop and any client server application
  • Supports only web environment

Also Check:- UFT vs Selenium: Difference Between Selenium and HP UFT

You Might Like: