Expose fixture and test functions to allow to use them dynamically

[reaktivo]

Are you requesting a feature or reporting a bug?

Requesting a feature

What is the current behavior?

For TestCafe to run a test we have to create a file which explicitly calls the fixture() and the test() function at least once.

What is the expected behavior?

Ideally we should be able to grab a handle of this functions without requiring to create a test file, this would allow us to integrate TestCafe with other test tools. I'm currently struggling to integrate with CucumberJS. Being able to have a reference to the fixture() and test() global functions would allow me to use the CucumberJS hooks which would help in transitioning to TestCafe without losing a lot of feature files that have been written with the Gherkin syntax.

How would you reproduce the current behavior (if this is a bug)?

N/A

Is there any others wishing to integrate TestCafe with other test tools? I'm currently working on a hacky solutions which involves generating test files at test execution time, requiring my actual test files and passing the fixture and test functions as reference (still not working thought). And I would like to know if there's any blessed way of doing this cleanly in a supported way.

[inikulin]

Can you give some example of how you expect it to work, please? E.g. if we expose these functions, how test task should be started? Currently you tell TestCafe to run specific file/dir and it lookups for file with test() calls and execute them. How workflow will look like with exposed functions?

[reaktivo]

Of course this is just an idea, but I'm thinking of something like the following:

createTestCafe('localhost').then(testcafe => {
  const runner = testcafe
    .createRunner()
    .browsers(['chrome']);

  const { fixture, test } = runner.getHandlers();

  myOtherTestFramework.getFeatures().forEach(feature => {
    fixture(feature.name);
    feature.steps.forEach(step => {
      test(step.name, step.fn);
    });
  })

  runner.run();
});

[inikulin]

@reaktivo How about

runner.populateTests('suite/file name', (fixture, test) => {
    fixture(feature.name);
    
    feature.steps.forEach(step => {
      test(step.name, step.fn);
    });
});

?

[inikulin]

But on the other hand I guess the better way to solve this will be plugable compilers. You will create testcafe-compiler-cucumber plugin which will be automatically loaded by TestCafe if installed. Plugin will decide which files to compile (by file extension and content patterns) and will implement logic that converts file content into sequence of test and fixture calls. Actually, we almost have this mechanism implemented (TestCafe currently supports 3 different types of test syntax, but it's a big secret ;)), therefore we just need to make its API public.

[rickschubert]

@inikulin What is the progress on this? I would love to use testcafe with BDD :)

[KonstBa]

are there any news on this? :)

[belkozavr]

Waiting for some native BDD support as well.

[rquellh]

I am also interested in this integration. I've tried my best to integrate Cucumber and TestCafe, but my solution loses some of the features of TestCafe in the process. If there could be an easier way it would be appreciated.

[bhreinb]

Yes I'm very interested in this too...I tried to integrate cucumberjs & testcafe but have found it to be seriously challenging at times :(

[DavidDaCosta]

I am also interested in this integration...

[link89]

Is there a way that we can control the lifecycle of test controller, so that we can use testcafe more like a library than a framework? Just like web driver does.

[edimistra]

I tried integrating with Gauge but it looks like there's a problem with the Gauge library. Having the ability to integrate with BDD would be finding the lost ark of agile testing :)