What is Cucumber Web Bridge?

Cucumber Web Bridge (CWB) is a framework for automatic testing of web interfaces. Currently it supports 2 type of web interfaces: your classic HTML based website and REST based webservices.

It's a text-driven framework, meaning you define the tests you want to execute in a simple plain text format instead of in a scripting or programming language directly. This is where Cucumber comes in. According to their website “Cucumber lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text”. It provides a plain text DSL called Gherkin to do this and has libraries in many different programming languages that help you convert the plain text scenarios into runnable test code.

CWB is built on top of Cucumber, using the Gherkin DSL as the driver for the tests. A test scenario in Gherkin is made up of several steps that do one or more actions. CWB comes with a default set of steps that allow you to manipulate webpages. That is in fact the core of CWB: a framework bringing you all the facilities and steps to quickly get you started testing web interfaces using Cucumber.

Who is it for?

CWB is meant for developers and product owners alike. Anyone with some technical background and a good idea about writing UI test scenario's can put it too good use.

What exactly can I test with CWB?

CWB is all about testing web interfaces:

Websites

Execute actions on a website - clicking buttons, following links - and verifying that certain content is displayed. Submitting a form an checking that certain fields are highlighted. Or more complex flows like creating a blog article and verifying it is displayed on all the pages you published it to. See the Language Reference page.

JSON REST web services

Perform POST, GET, PUT actions to web services. Create request data using YAML and verify or query the response you get back. See the REST steps language reference.

How much does it cost?

Nothing. CWB is entirely free and open source (and will remain so). It is built on top of other open source frameworks like Cucumber Java, Spring and SAHI.

Seeing it in action...

What do I need to get started?

All you really need is a Java Development Kit and Apache Maven. CWB should work with pretty much any IDE, but we prefer to integrate with IntelliJ IDEA.

If you are entirely new to all this, we do provide a single download package. You can find all links and instructions on the demo page.

Basic installation

The basic installation. Should be done only once. See: I nitial Setup
Create a new project. See: Create a New Project
Learn the Language Reference.
Read the how-to and have a look at the tips & tricks

If you're a Java developer who wants to extend a CWB project with your own code, please consult the CWB for developers pages.

Extending CWB

If you wish to extend the code of CWB, you should be in the development section.

News

Executing ConsoleRunner from JUnit

Arne Vandamme posted on Aug 23, 2016

Apart from command-line, it's perfectly possible to ConsoleRunner from inside a unit test. This means you could have different JUnit tests (or some other framework) that run different cucumber features in parallel. You can configure all settings and pass in system properties. Inside your unit test you can only assert the exit code of the ConsoleRunner (only 0 is ok), but all logs and reports will still be written to the output directory specified.…

New folders option on ConsoleRunner

Arne Vandamme posted on Aug 09, 2016

We've added a new option to the ConsoleRunner that allows you to specify entire directories of features that should be run in order. This can help improve performance and reduce configuration overhead for a large test suite.

Testing Spring Boot microservices using Cucumber and CWB REST

Arne Vandamme posted on Dec 16, 2015

In this tutorial I will show you how to use Cucumber and CWB REST to test a Spring Boot microservice. Starting from a Spring Boot application using an embedded Tomcat, we will first setup the CWB integration and write a simple feature. The feature will connect to the actual running webserver and execute its scenario's.…

CWB 1.1.0 released

Arne Vandamme posted on Nov 12, 2015

After using a SNAPSHOT for almost 2 years, we have finally gotten around to creating a first public release of Cucumber Web Bridge. Version 1.1.0.RELEASE is directly available on Maven central, no longer requiring you to use the Foreach repository.

SAHI steps for attribute and class checking

Arne Vandamme posted on Jul 14, 2015

The current snapshot of CWB has been updated and includes some new steps that can be used for checking of HTML attributes and CSS classes. An element can now be checked for the presence or absence of attributes, along with the set attribute value. Additional steps are included for CSS class checking, that allow you to verify the presence of class names regardless of their order. Favour the Javascript/DOM attribute names if possible. For instance: class is in fact className and for is htmlFor.…

Quick-fix for issues with IntelliJ 14.1.3+

Arne Vandamme posted on Jul 02, 2015

Users running CWB scenarios directly from IntelliJ 14.1.3 or higher have reported that execution fails with Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/transaction/TransactionDefinition. The cause is incorrect detection of the Glue property, for some reason the package cucumber.api.spring is added incorrectly. The solution is to manually define the glue (eg com.foreach.cuke) in the default run configuration.…

9 tips for improving Cucumber test readability

Arne Vandamme posted on Jun 24, 2015

Even when automating UI tests, it is important to keep your scenarios as readable as possible, or you threaten to lose all benefits from a plain-text approach. In this post I’ll give you some tips that can help you with the basics.

Chrome browser options

Arne Vandamme posted on Jun 18, 2015

Common browser options that we configure in browser_types.…

Scaling test execution using the ConsoleRunner

Arne Vandamme posted on Mar 25, 2015

In this post I'll explain how you can use the new ConsoleRunner to execute CWB tests in parallel and have failed tests automatically retried. This aids you in running tests faster and can be especially helpful when suffering from random failing SAHI tests.

1 Comment

SAHI 5.0 upgrade

Arne Vandamme posted on Mar 25, 2015

As of now we are switching to using a custom SAHI build for CWB. The first version is based on SAHI OS 5 and adds some customizations. It's advised that all projects switch to the new build as soon as possible.

sahi

New steps for browser wait

Isaac Van der Straeten posted on Oct 02, 2014

New step: exists Analog to the visible/not visible step, there is a new step added for exists/does not exist. Where the visible step also perform a css check (except for visibility hidden and display none), the new step only checks if the elements are available in the DOM structure. New step: wait until X In some cases a test must wait on a AJAX or Javascript action. Often, the common i wait for X ms step is used.…

CWB tips: avoid "i should see"

Isaac Van der Straeten posted on Oct 02, 2014

Just a pointer for Cucumber tests: Avoid the i should see “TEXT” step, it checks only if a certain string is found in document.body. It is easy but it is not reliable to check if this text is really visible. Choose to see if a specific element is visible or contains a certain text.…

Using SAHI locators

Isaac Van der Straeten posted on Oct 02, 2014

Some SAHI tips.

What is Cucumber Web Bridge?

Who is it for?

What exactly can I test with CWB?

Websites

JSON REST web services

How much does it cost?

Seeing it in action...

What do I need to get started?

Basic installation

Extending CWB

News

Recent space activity

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