Support (groovy) method names with spaces

Groovy allows method names with spaces and other special chars, like this here:

@Given("")
void "ein Benutzer ist als Admin mit dem Benutzernamen {string} angemeldet"(String userMail) {
	final def adminEmail = getProperty(userMail);
}

This would allow us to use the actual step definition string as the method name, instead of artificial/weird method names.

This could easily be supported by adding this “fix” to the JavaStepDefinition class. Instead of failing if the annotation value is empty, it could do this:

if (expression != null && !"".intern().equals(expression)) {
	this.expression = requireNonNull(expression, "cucumber-expression may not be null");
} else {
	// groovy methods can be strings, so in case the expression is empty, we just use the method name
	this.expression = method.getName();
}

Possibly combined with a check if the class implements GroovyObject.

Additionally it would be nice to set the annotation default values to an empty string, so that @Given("") could be further reduced to @Given.

With such a small code change groovy support could be drastically improved (even without a separate backend!).

I tried this myself (created a new groovy backend) but failed because both the java and my groovy backend matched the same step definitions leading to duplication exceptions.

Hope you guys are open for such improvements 😃

[mpkorstanje]

I’m not really interested in maintaining an exception and associated tests for Groovy.

it would conflict with the java backend.

Each backend should use its own annotations/methods and through the ObjectFactory each backend also has access to the same test context. There should be very little conflict.

[stale[bot]]

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