The Hooks class contains Cucumber @Before and @After hooks that run automatically around every scenario. It is responsible for starting a fresh browser session before each test and closing it cleanly afterwards.
Source
package hooks;
import io.cucumber.java.After;
import io.cucumber.java.Before;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import utilities.TestContext;
public class Hooks {
private TestContext context;
public Hooks(TestContext context) {
this.context = context;
}
@Before
public void setUp() {
context.driver = new ChromeDriver();
context.driver.manage().window().maximize();
}
@After
public void tearDown() {
if (context.driver != null) {
context.driver.quit();
}
}
}
Constructor injection
public Hooks(TestContext context)
Hooks for a scenario. The TestContext object it receives is the same instance shared with all step definition classes in the same scenario, so any value written to context.driver in setUp() is immediately visible to every step.
@Before — setUp
@Before
public void setUp()
- Creates a new
ChromeDriver session using Selenium 4’s built-in driver manager (no manual chromedriver download required).
- Maximizes the browser window to prevent element-visibility failures caused by off-screen UI.
- Stores the driver in
context.driver so that all step classes and page objects can use it.
Selenium 4 resolves the ChromeDriver binary automatically via its built-in Selenium Manager. You do not need to configure a WebDriverManager dependency or download any binary manually.
@After — tearDown
@After
public void tearDown()
- Checks that
context.driver is not null before calling quit() — this guard prevents a NullPointerException if setUp() failed to initialize the driver.
- Calls
driver.quit() (not driver.close()), which closes all windows and terminates the browser process, freeing OS and memory resources.
Always use quit() rather than close() in teardown. close() only closes the current window and leaves the browser process running, which causes resource leaks in CI environments.
Execution order
[Scenario begins]
→ @Before setUp() — new ChromeDriver, window maximized
→ Step 1
→ Step 2
→ ...
→ Step N
→ @After tearDown() — driver.quit(), resources released
[Scenario ends]
Adding custom hooks
You can add more hooks directly to the Hooks class or create a separate hooks class in the hooks package. Both approaches are picked up automatically because hooks is listed in the glue configuration.
// Attach a screenshot on failure
@After
public void attachScreenshotOnFailure(Scenario scenario) {
if (scenario.isFailed() && context.driver != null) {
byte[] screenshot = ((TakesScreenshot) context.driver)
.getScreenshotAs(OutputType.BYTES);
scenario.attach(screenshot, "image/png", "failure-screenshot");
}
}
Cucumber supports multiple @Before and @After hooks in the same class or across different classes. Use the order attribute to control execution sequence when you have more than one hook of the same type: @Before(order = 1) runs before @Before(order = 2).
// Only runs before scenarios tagged @login
@Before("@login")
public void setUpLoginContext() {
// pre-populate login credentials, etc.
}