How We Used Maven and Cucumber to Automate Regression Testing

In today’s fast-paced development environment, regression testing is essential to ensure that new changes don’t break existing features. Our team faced challenges with manual regression tests taking too long and missing edge cases. That’s when we decided to automate our regression suite using Maven and Cucumber—a powerful combination for Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) in Java.

Here’s a look at our journey and how we made it work.

Why We Chose Maven and Cucumber

Cucumber allowed us to write test scenarios in plain English using Gherkin syntax, making collaboration across the team easier. Maven helped us manage dependencies and run tests efficiently while integrating well into CI/CD pipelines.

Project Setup Overview

/src
  /main/java
  /test/java
    /stepdefinitions
    /runners
    /features
pom.xml
        

Key Dependencies in pom.xml:

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>io.cucumber</groupId>
        <artifactId>cucumber-java</artifactId>
        <version>7.11.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>io.cucumber</groupId>
        <artifactId>cucumber-junit</artifactId>
        <version>7.11.0</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>junit</groupId>
        <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
        <version>4.13.2</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>
        

Writing Our Test Scenarios

Feature: Login Functionality

  Scenario: Successful login with valid credentials
    Given the user is on the login page
    When the user enters valid username and password
    Then the user should be redirected to the dashboard
        

Step definition example:

@Given("the user is on the login page")
public void user_on_login_page() {
    driver.get("https://example.com/login");
}
        

Running the Tests with Maven

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@CucumberOptions(
    features = "src/test/java/features",
    glue = "stepdefinitions",
    plugin = {"pretty", "html:target/cucumber-report.html"},
    tags = "@Regression"
)
public class TestRunner {}
        

To execute:

mvn test

Reporting

Maven’s Surefire plugin and Cucumber’s built-in report generation helped us produce clean HTML reports, which we shared with the team for every build.

CI/CD Integration

We added our Maven commands to Jenkins, enabling automated test execution on every code push. This ensured that regression bugs were caught early in the release cycle.

Lessons Learned

• Keeping Gherkin scenarios simple and focused improved readability.

• Tagging scenarios (@Regression,@Smoke,@Sanity) made test execution flexible.

• Regular refactoring of step definitions helped avoid duplication and improved maintainability.

Final Thoughts

Automating regression tests with Maven and Cucumber streamlined our QA process, improved collaboration, and gave us faster feedback on code changes. If your team is looking for a maintainable way to scale test automation, this combination is a great place to start.

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