The Cucumber for Java Book: Behaviour-Driven Development for Testers and Developers

by Seb Rose, Matt Wynne, Aslak Hellesoy

Teams working on the JVM can now say goodbye forever to misunderstood requirements, tedious manual acceptance tests, and out-of-date documentation. Cucumber - the popular, open-source tool that helps teams communicate more effectively with their customers - now has a Java version, and our bestselling Cucumber Book has been updated to match. The Cucumber for Java Book has the same great advice about how to deliver rock-solid applications collaboratively, but with all code completely rewritten in Java. New chapters cover features unique to the Java version of Cucumber, and reflect insights from the Cucumber team since the original book was published. Until now it's been difficult for teams developing Java applications to learn how to benefit from Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). This book changes all that by describing in detail how to use Cucumber to harness the power of plain language specifications in your development process. In part 1, you'll discover how to use Cucumber's Gherkin DSL to describe the behavior your customers want from the system. You'll also learn how to write Java code that interprets those plain language specifications and checks them against your application. Part 2 guides you through a worked example, using Spring, MySQL, and Jetty. Enhanced chapters teach you how to use Selenium to drive your application and handle asynchronous Ajax calls, and new chapters cover Dependency Injection (DI) and advanced techniques to help keep your test suites fast. Part 3 shows you how to integrate Cucumber with your Continuous Integration (CI) system, work with a REST web service, and even use BDD with legacy applications. Written by the creator of Cucumber and two of its most experienced users and contributors, The Cucumber for Java Book is an authoritative guide that will give you and your team all the knowledge you need to start using Cucumber with confidence.

Genres: Programming, Technical, Software, Reference, Computer Science

340 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2014

Reviews

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've already read The Cucumber Book, so there weren't many surprises inside of this book. It was, like the other one a really decent read and explains some of the specialties of the Java implementation pretty well.

I am not entirely sure, why there has to be a chapter with four CDI implementations in a book about testing, but I assume people have problems with the different injectors.

[Jia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a helpful introduction to BDD using Cucumber. However, the latter end-to-end examples cover more general coding instead of Cucumber itself. I wished for a deeper explanation of how Cucumber works under the hood, rather than just how to use it.

[Keith Chappelow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of using Cucumber with Java. Lots of insightful tips based on the authors' experiences.

[Safayar Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best book to start cucumber in Java. Lots of example and tips from writers make this book very pleasant to read.

[Miloš · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every time I come across a book from The Pragmatic Bookshelf I feel like a kid waiting to be dazzled by his new shiny toy and get his mind blown. Cucumber for Java was no different and, mind you, it did not disappoint.

Just like the best technology books out there, this one goes above and beyond presenting a specific tool - by focusing on principles and best-practices of BDD as much as on Gherkin and Cucumber features, the authors have created a title that not only teaches you how to properly use Cucumber with Java in a variety of situations and applications but how to do the same with basically any BDD tool out there.

[Christophe Addinquy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, probably the best book to onboard with Cucumber ! Not only because one of the committer is one of the author of the book, but especially because the text drive us from the very beginning to write our acceptance tests. Th good surprise is the focus on expressiveness of the test while I was expecting a pure technical book. The build isssues happen a little bt late and the author are not very clear on the structuration issues. But an indispensable book anyway.
Ma note de lecture en français ici

[Andreea · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's one of the best books you can find on the subject. If you're interested in learning the BDD approach with Cucumber using Java as a programming language, this is definitely the book for you. It comes with great support for non-technical people as well and provides a set of best practices which come useful even for the people that have already been using this tool.
I recommend it for stakeholders, testers or developers that want to improve their development and testing process reliant on Java. Of course, this is not the only tool of such, but it's a fantastic start.

[David Rissato Cruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book amazingly well written. It builds up your knowledge gradually introducing new concepts in every chapter, and refactoring previous code to demonstrate how to do it in a better way using what you have just learned. The example is well built, and during the book it covers many of our real world problems (calling databases, rest apis, html interfaces), so you don't feel foolished like "these examples are utopic and I can't see my problems solved this way". One of the best books about testing that I've read latelly. 5 stars for sure.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great way to introduce to BDD. Clear examples and integration with a lot of frameworks.