Agfdhyk

Running Cypress 3.1.1 with cypress-cucumber-preprocessor 1.5.1. I need to pass some static data from one step to another (in the same scenario/test). I can do this using an alias, like this:
cy.wrap(someString).as('myString'), but then I have to access it asynchronously:

cy.get('@myString').then(myString => ...)

This is rather cumbersome, particularly when I have to pass multiple values, requiring multiple wrapped closures, for no apparent benefit. (Currently I'm working around this by aliasing an object, but I shouldn't need to do this.)

How can I pass primitive values from one step to another synchronously?

I thought I might be able to simply set this.myString='' to set the value on the Mocha shared context object, but in that case, the property exists but is set to undefined when accessed in later steps.

Even creating my own context variable with let outside of the step definition does not work. Is this simply a limitation of Cypress and/or the cypress-cucumber-preprocessor?

This not a complete answer, but you can set javascript variables in a before(() => {}) statement, and they will be available to use within any nested it(..., () => {}) statements.

For example, I have one set of tests checking two versions of the same app written in different frameworks. So I need to know the framework being tested, and load different fixtures.

To do this I use the following

const framework = Cypress.env('FRAMEWORK')

let config;



before(function() {

  cy.fixture('frameworks').then(fixture => {

    config = fixture[framework]

  })

})

Then I can use config in tests,

cy.visit(config.pageUrl)



it('should have a title', () => {

  cy.title().should('contain', config.title)

});

You can use before() in many places in the test suite, generally after a describe() or context() and the variables defined within are available in a 'normal' javascript way.

Here is a slightly more complicated (and not fully tested) method. A custom command can be added to save values to a global object.

In the Cypress test runner, all the tests seem to run sequentially, but you may have to be careful if using CI and parallel execution.

In /support/commands.js

export const testStore = {}



Cypress.Commands.add('saveAs', { prevSubject: true }, (value, propName) => {

  console.log('saveAs', value, propName)

  testStore[propName] = value;

  return value; 

})

In myTest.spec.js

import { testStore } from '../support/commands.js'

...



it('should have a title', () => {

  cy.title()

    .saveAs('title')             // save for next test

    .should('contain', 'myTitle) // this test's expectation

});



it('should test something else', () => {

  cy.get('.myElement').contains(testStore.title);

});