Retrying a scenario only under certain conditions

[tgsmith61591]

I am reading this section on retry in the documentation. I have a given step that fetches a cached token to use for a downstream API call. This token has an associated TTL, and must be refreshed occasionally. In the event that the step gets a stale token, my test will return a 403, in which event I'd like to retry the scenario.

My question is how I can amend the retry behavior to only retry for a certain event? Something like:

  @retry.for_http(403)
  Scenario: API call works
    Given I have a token  # get cached token, or refresh it if it has expired
    When I file a cucumber-rs issue
     Then I will figure out how to solve my problem

Any ideas how I can approach this problem?

[ilslv]

@tgsmith61591 we don't support more complex logic for the retries and I don't think that we will ever do that. Quoting the cucumber book

WARNING: Although this feature is supported, we highly recommend to use it as the last resort only. First, consider implementing in-step retries with your own needs (like exponential backoff). Other ways of dealing with flaky tests include, but not limited to: reducing number of concurrently executed scenarios (maybe even using @serial tag), mocking external environment, controlling time in tests or even simulation testing. It's always better to move towards tests determinism, rather than trying to tame their flakiness.

So I think the best way to deal with your situation is to implement in-step retry or some way to preemptively rotate API keys.