Thucydides is very cool test automation framework, with good built-in support of Selenium/WebDriver, understandable java API, simple architecture. This project also has integration with common BDD frameworks as JBehave and EasyB. Integration with JBehave is done by thucydides-jbehave project src.

JBehave allows you to write, store and run your tests in plain text files with .story extension.

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Scenario: trader is not alerted below threshold
 
Given a stock of symbol STK1 and a threshold of 10.0
When the stock is traded at 5.0
Then the alert status should be OFF
 
Scenario: trader is alerted above threshold
 
Given a stock of symbol STK1 and a threshold of 10.0
When the stock is traded at 11.0
Then the alert status should be ON

Each story file is same as one test suite. That’s why it should be atomic and without dependecies from other tests.

The main goal of testing is to provide feedback to developers team as fast as possible. The most powerfull solution to reduce time spent for tests is run them in parallel processes. Now if you use Thucydides and Jbehave frameworks together out of the box, you can’t run tests in parallel mode. But exists severall solutions for this issue.

First is to divide automatically all stories on batches and then run them by some build server. Here is a good article written by Simeon Ross, which presents how to use this approach by using Bamboo.

Second is to use Maven Failsafe plugin parallel test execution ability. Maven failsafe plugin has ability to run tests using forks by setting the parameter forkCount to a value higher than 1. The parameter forkCount defines the maximum number of JVM processes that Failsafe will spawn concurrently to execute the tests. Below you can find an example of this approach.

First of all you should create JUnitStory test for each JBehave story. For example you have use_calendar.story file inside your src/test/resources/stories folder. That means you should create UseCalendar class in your src/test/java folder and extend it from ThucydidesJUnitStory class. Class name should be same as story name and match to java syntax (use “CamelCase” without spaces).

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package com.mdolinin.acceptancetest;

import net.thucydides.jbehave.ThucydidesJUnitStory;

public class UseCalendar extends ThucydidesJUnitStory {}

Then make changes in configuration of your pom.xml. You should define where to find your JUnitStory classes and how many forks to use. For example you want to run all your stories in parallel mode.

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         <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.16</version>
            <configuration>
                <systemPropertyVariables>
                    <webdriver.driver>${webdriver.driver}</webdriver.driver>
                </systemPropertyVariables>
                <includes>
                    <include>**/acceptancetest/*.java</include>
                </includes>
                <forkMode>perthread</forkMode>
                <threadCount>4</threadCount>
            </configuration>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>integration-test</goal>
                        <goal>verify</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

Now if you run your tests using maven then every story will run in one of four forks.

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$ mvn integration-test

But it is boring to create new boilerplate class for each story file. That’s why I created maven-thucydides-jbehave-plugin src for this job. To use it add to your pom.xml build section with goal generate-sources and define project.junit.stories.package(where to put generated stubs) in properties section. See example below:

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<properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
    <webdriver.driver>firefox</webdriver.driver>
    <project.junit.stories.package>com.mdolinin.acceptancetest</project.junit.stories.package>
</properties>

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         <plugin>
            <groupId>net.thucydides.maven.plugin</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-thucydides-jbehave-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>0.9.223-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>generate-sources</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

I hope this will be usefull for someone.