Cucumber test suite: how to pass username and password without hardcoding

Question

I'm building a test suite with Cucumber on Java + Maven + jUnit and I need to pass a username and a password to the test suite so it can log in to the application under test.

I don't like the idea of hardcoding the credentials, so I thought maybe I should be passing them as arguments when running the maven command, or maybe I can add them in the pom.xml somewhere and then read them in the code. But I don't know how to do either. Or maybe there's a third option that I haven't thought of...

Answer 1

You can do Data-driven testing using these,

1. Scenario Outline with Examples keyword

2. Using external Files: Excel, Json, XML

For more details check below links:
1. Data-driven-framework-with-excel
2. Adding_source_to_gherkin_script

Answer 2

you can read the topic about enums and interfaces in Java. Maybe it will help you to create something as you want. There are a lot of decisions. The xml file can be created with different accounts as well then you pass it through your Interfaces, Classes and etc.

<users>
    <user>
        <lastname>John</lastname>
        <firstname>Doe</firstname>
        <code>LOGIN</code>
        <password>PASSWORD</password>
    </user>

Answer 3

There is a feature called Scenario Outline for data driven tests in cucumber.

It can be used in this scenario to pass different user/passwords as data to the test as parameters.

Answer 4

I've found that keychain and secret stash can help with these - plugins that can access your operating system's credential storage.

The documentation should give you more information, but essentially, you store your passwords in your OS's password manager, and then call the plugin's library to get the passwords like an api.