Gradle task to check files/commands in PATH environment variable before running tests

Recently I was debugging a failing tests and it turn out the when Jenkins runs the tests on a remote node shell environment is not initialized hence one of binary dependency of the application under tests was missing.

Solution:
Add the additional location in the PATH from jenkins
e.g. export PATH=$PATH:/opt/bin/

Force checking in gradle:
In the light of principle like ""treat test code with the same level of care as production code" and To help my fellow tester (and my future self) it's better to add this as check in gradle.

// rest of your build
// Verfied with gradle 4.10
task("checkEnv"){
    doFirst {
        def listOfFileToCheckInPath = ['find', 'grep']
        listOfFileToCheckInPath.each { file ->
            if(!isFoundInPath(file))
                throw new GradleException("${file} was not found in any of the folder in PATH: ${System.getenv('PATH').split(File.pathSeparator)}")
        }
    }
}
/**
 * Static function to verify if a file/command exist in PATH environment 
 * @param file
 * @return true if found, else false
 */
def static isFoundInPath( file){
    def PATH_ENV = System.getenv('PATH')
    def fileFound = PATH_ENV.split(File.pathSeparator).find{ folder ->
        println("Looking for ${file} in ${folder}")
        if (Paths.get( "${folder}${File.separator}${file}").toFile().exists()){
            println("Found ${file} in ${folder}")
            return true
        }
    }
    return fileFound
}
// Making test task to depend on checkEnv
test.dependsOn checkEnv

The output would look something like:

./gradlew checkEnv
> Task :checkEnv
Looking for find in /usr/local/bin
Looking for find in /usr/bin
Found find in /usr/bin
Looking for grep in /usr/local/bin
Looking for grep in /usr/bin
Found grep in /usr/bin

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 0s

Gist on github

Selenium, Jbehave , gradle and Serenity - Perfect combination for automating BDD styled checks in Java

I have just created this demo project using Selenium, gradle, Jbehave and Serenity

https://github.com/mubbashir/jbehave-selenium-bdd

Why add Serenity?

Serenity adds plugins to Jbehave and makes it a lot easier to write acceptance tests as mentioned on it site Serenity BDD helps you write cleaner and more maintainable automated acceptance and regression tests faster.
The other things I loved about Serenity is the it has wonderful reports  for BDD "Serenity also uses the test results to produce illustrated, narrative reports that document and describe what your application does and how it works."
See:

Structure

├── ReadMe.md  ## ReadME file of cource ;)
├── build.gradle ## gradle build file 
├── gradle
│   └── wrapper
│       ├── gradle-wrapper.jar
│       └── gradle-wrapper.properties
├── gradlew ## grdadle warapper
├── src
│   └── test
│       ├── java
│       │   └── test
│       │       ├── WebTest.java ## This is where the tests resides which add all the steps using net.serenitybdd.jbehave.SerenityStepFactory
│       │       └── selenium
│       │           ├── page ## This where all the pages extending net.serenitybdd.core.pages.PageObject
│       │           │   ├── google
│       │           │   │   └── GoogleLanding.java
│       │           │   └── interfaces
│       │           │       └── Landing.java
│       │           └── steps ## Pages are used in steps 
│       │               └── GoogleSteps.java
│       └── resources
│           └── stories
│               └── google
│                   ├── Search2.story
│                   └── search.story

Refrences

• [jbehave]: http://jbehave.org/
• [gradle]: http://gradle.org/
• [serenity]: http://thucydides.info/docs/serenity/#first-steps