Register custom UrlReporter for Cucumber Reports

[aslakhellesoy]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I would like to capture the URL of the published report and send a message to an external service (Slack) with the URL of the report.

Describe the solution you'd like

I want to be able to specify an alternative implementation of UrlReporter, perhaps using a system property:

-Dcucumber.publish.urlreporter=com.acme.MyUrlReporter 

Work involved:

• Split the current UrlReporter class to a UrlReporter interface and a DefaultUrlReporter class
• Use java.util.ServiceLoader to instantiate the class, taken from the cucumber.publish.urlreporter system property

Describe alternatives you've considered

Redirecting STDERR to a file, then parse it with a shell script and send the message. That's quite a roundabout way of doing this.

Additional context

This is actually something that's requested by a user of Cucumber Reports.

[mpkorstanje]

I imagine you may be better of by making Cucumber reports a Slack app that makes the call backs. Similar to the Jira and Pagerduty Slack apps.

[mpkorstanje]

Okay. I am definitely convinced this isn't a good feature. Aside from being a nice example of feature creep, if the cucumber reports app were to make the calls to slack it would allow this functionality to work for all implementations rather then only cucumber-jvm.

[aslakhellesoy]

I wasn't suggesting implementing the slack logic - I only mentioned slack as an example. All I'm suggesting is to allow users to specify an implementation class of their own.

It could be used to send the result to a variety of destinations, depending on the users' needs. Some possible use cases:

• Send a request to a HTTP API
• Append to a file
• Send an email

The idea is to open up the API so users can capture the URL in their own team/environment/organisation specific way.

[mpkorstanje]

I'm aware. I don't think that is worth the complexity. Ideally we provide a plugin system such that these concerns are addressable by the end user. The current extension applies only to the PublishPlugin. And between a redesign, feature creep or alternative solution I reckon the alternative solution is the better way to support the example usecase.

[mpkorstanje]

See also: https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/issues/1834

[aslakhellesoy]

I agree we should have a uniform plugin solution rather than many different ones sprinkled across the codebase.

Are you saying that if we implement #1834 we might be able to support a pluggable UrlReporter too?

[mpkorstanje]

No but the publish plugin would have it's own module and it's own api. Part of that API could be a client to talk to the reports api.

People with different use cases could reuse that client in their own plugin. And then for example compose their slack notifier around it.

The biggest challenge is accessing configuration for plugins and url reporters. With a better plugin system we can make that easier. Instead of providing a single purpose extension point by enabling composition we can facilitate much more.

[ahmetchakmak]

I am very surprised this feature is not implemented already. Clicking on a console output shouldn't be the only way to reach report. There is basically no way to share report link with others with your automation code.

[mpkorstanje]

Cucumber is an opensource project and mostly maintained by people in their spare time. Are you interested in doing the work needed to make the plugin system more pluggable?

[aslakhellesoy]

Also see the last paragraph of the LICENSE. If you really want this you can contribute it yourself. We're here to help you if you have any questions about how to proceed.

[stale[bot]]

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