Hooks, Background, Tags, Scenario Lifecycle, and Test Suite Organization
Organize scenarios cleanly by understanding setup and teardown hooks, tag-based filtering, and shared context patterns.
Inside this chapter
- Before and After Hooks
- Background and Shared Context
- Tags for Execution Control
- Lifecycle Awareness
Series navigation
Study the chapters in order for the clearest path from beginner BDD concepts to advanced automation architecture. Use the navigation at the bottom of each page to move through the full tutorial series.
Before and After Hooks
Hooks run setup or cleanup code around scenarios. They are commonly used for browser startup, test data initialization, login setup, screenshots on failure, and environment cleanup. Hooks are powerful, but overusing them can hide important behavior and make tests harder to reason about.
@Before
public void setUp() {
driver = new ChromeDriver();
}
@After
public void tearDown() {
driver.quit();
}Background and Shared Context
The Background section in Gherkin is used when several scenarios in the same feature need the same initial context. It can be useful, but if backgrounds become long, they often signal that the feature file is doing too much or mixing too many behaviors.
Tags for Execution Control
@smoke
@regression
@loginTags help group and filter scenarios for selective execution. Teams often use tags for smoke tests, critical flows, modules, API tests, UI tests, or environment-specific subsets.
Lifecycle Awareness
Advanced teams think carefully about what should happen per scenario, per feature, or per test run. Reliable automation depends on controlled lifecycle management, especially when tests run in parallel or reuse shared environments.