can we use cucumber custom formatters to init and clean data?

Question

I'm using cucumber for testing my application. I have to set up large data for a feature and clean up after FEATURE is complete. After doing some research over web, I found out there are hooks only for scenarios but not for before and after hooks for features.

Also, I found that cucumber notifies a formatter on its execution life cycle.

So, the question is, can I use a custom formatter and listen to before_feature and after_feature events to init and clean data? Is it allowed?

Thanks,

mkalakota

Answer 1

No, you cannot use a formatter for this. If you are trying to set up the data, then run many scenarios, then clean up the data, be aware that this makes your scenarios very fragile. Instead what you should do is setup the data for each scenario and clean it up at the end. You can do this very easily with background. e.g.

Feature: Lge data test

Background:
  Given I have lge data

  Scenario: foo
    ...
  Scenario: bar

You would be better of making the loading of the lge data set fast (use SQL dump), and only using it when you absolutely have too. Feature hooks are an anti-pattern, which is why Cucumber doesn't support them.