Filed under: Cucumber, — Tags: Gherkin — Thomas Sundberg — 2018-01-24
Cucumber-JVM supports a lot of languages for writing concrete examples that describes a wanted behaviour. The examples are written in feature files. The five important keywords are:
These keywords are translated into many different languages. So many that it may be hard to keep track of them. How do you find the keywords for your native language? Luckily, cucumber can help with that using its built in help system.
If you run a regular command line program, getting help is often a matter of passing the argument -H
to
a command line tool. When I do that for cp
, it looks like this:
$ cp -H usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvXc] source_file target_file cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvXc] source_file ... target_directory
I get brief usage instructions.
How can I do that with Cucumber if I'm using Maven to build my project? The answer is, pass a Cucumber option to Cucumber.
It may look like this: mvn test -Dcucumber.options="--help"
This will run the Maven test target and pass the option --help
to Cucumber. Somewhere in the build
output I found this:
Running RunCukesTest Usage: java cucumber.api.cli.Main [options] [[[FILE|DIR][:LINE[:LINE]*] ]+ | @FILE ] Options: -g, --glue PATH Where glue code (step definitions, hooks and plugins) are loaded from. -p, --[add-]plugin PLUGIN[:PATH_OR_URL] Register a plugin. Built-in formatter PLUGIN types: junit, html, pretty, progress, json, usage, rerun, testng. Built-in summary PLUGIN types: default_summary, null_summary. PLUGIN can also be a fully qualified class name, allowing registration of 3rd party plugins. --add-plugin does not clobber plugins of that type defined from a different source. -f, --format FORMAT[:PATH_OR_URL] Deprecated. Use --plugin instead. -t, --tags TAG_EXPRESSION Only run scenarios tagged with tags matching TAG_EXPRESSION. -n, --name REGEXP Only run scenarios whose names match REGEXP. -d, --[no-]-dry-run Skip execution of glue code. -m, --[no-]-monochrome Don't colour terminal output. -s, --[no-]-strict Treat undefined and pending steps as errors. --snippets [underscore|camelcase] Naming convention for generated snippets. Defaults to underscore. -v, --version Print version. -h, --help You're looking at it. --i18n LANG List keywords for in a particular language Run with "--i18n help" to see all languages --junit,OPTION[,OPTION]* Pass the OPTION(s) to the JUnit module. Use --junit,-h or --junit,--help to print the options of the JUnit module. Feature path examples:Load the files with the extension ".feature" for the directory and its sub directories. / .feature Load the feature file / .feature from the file system. classpath: / .feature Load the feature file / .feature from the classpath. / .feature:3:9 Load the scenarios on line 3 and line 9 in the file / .feature. @ / Parse / for feature paths generated by the rerun formatter.
This is a lot of information, but you can see that if you pass the option --i18n LANG
you will get the
translations for your language of choice. All you have to do now is substitute LANG
with your language
code.
If you are uncertain of the language code to use, it is possible to ask for all supported language codes by passing
the argument --i18n help
.
mvn test -Dcucumber.options="--i18n help"
gives you this list:
Running RunCukesTest af am ar ast az bg bm bs ca cs cy-GB da de el em en en-Scouse en-au en-lol en-old en-pirate eo es et fa fi fr ga gj gl he hi hr ht hu id is it ja jv ka kn ko lt lu lv mk-Cyrl mk-Latn mn nl no pa pl pt ro ru sk sl sr-Cyrl sr-Latn sv ta th tl tlh tr tt uk ur uz vi zh-CN
That's a lot of languages! I counted to 72. With this list, you have to locate your native language. As I'm from
Sweden I located my language code to be sv
. Listing the Gherkin keywords in swedish is now a matter of
passing the option -i18n sv
.
mvn test -Dcucumber.options="--i18n sv"
gave me these translations:
Running RunCukesTest | feature | "Egenskap" | | background | "Bakgrund" | | scenario | "Scenario" | | scenario outline | "Abstrakt Scenario", "Scenariomall" | | examples | "Exempel" | | given | "* ", "Givet " | | when | "* ", "När " | | then | "* ", "Så " | | and | "* ", "Och " | | but | "* ", "Men " | | given (code) | "Givet" | | when (code) | "När" | | then (code) | "Så" | | and (code) | "Och" | | but (code) | "Men" |
This gives me all the translations I need. Apart from translations of, given
, when
, then
,
etc. I get translations for the annotations needed for connecting the steps in my Java code.
The only thing I'm currently missing is the name of the language in the language list. Including that in the output would make it easier to find the language you are looking for. I guess if I want it, I need to support the open source project and add it myself.
I would like to thank Malin Ekholm for proofreading and helping me to find my typos.