Using custom java class in karate feature file [duplicate] - karate

Question

Good morning. I am working on a project that uses Karate Standalone. I am completely new to Karate to excuse my lack of knowledge here.
The standalone karate jar is executed with the '-m' command line parameter to start a mock.feature. The mock.feature references a utils class that is built on 'org.springframework.amqp'.
The problem is that the karate.jar startup fails with a Command Line Execution Exception due to external library 'org/springframework/amqp/rabbit/connection/ConnectionFactory'
api1_mock_test.feature
Feature: API1 Mock Test
Background:
* def RabbitUtils = Java.type('utils.RabbitUtils')
.
.
Our RabbitUtils is just a java class that imports org.springframework.amqp external libraries to provide functions to interact with a Rabbit AMQP broker e.g. connect, receive, publish, purge etc. When built and run in IntelliJ all works ok. The POM reference in the project is:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.amqp</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-rabbit</artifactId>
<version>2.1.5.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
Does the Karate standalone jar have some way of referencing external libraries? The classpath parameter is set to reference our workspace '.\target\test-classes' and contains the RabbitUtils.class file.
The current execution from workspace root looks like this:
java -jar C:\intuit\karate-0.9.3.RC2.jar -cp .\target\test-classes -p 6868 -m .\src\test\java\mocks\api1_mock_test.feature
08:57:05.122 [main] INFO com.intuit.karate.Main - Karate version: 0.9.3.RC2
08:57:05.891 [main] ERROR com.intuit.karate - server-side background init failed - api1_mock_test.feature:4
Exception in thread "main" picocli.CommandLine$ExecutionException:
-unknown-:4 - org/springframework/amqp/rabbit/connection/ConnectionFactory
Thank you!

Answer 1

Thanks for asking this, and I think I've figured out a way to do this which opens up a lot of great possibilities. The solution is to use Java first-principles, and not use the -jar option. The Karate command-line-app (or CLI) class happens to be com.intuit.karate.Main. I'm going to provide a demo here of using SikuliX. First, the feature file test.feature:
Feature: sikuli test
Background:
* def Screen = Java.type('org.sikuli.script.Screen')
Scenario:
* def s = new Screen()
* def c = s.capture()
* c.getFile('.')
And with the karate.jar and sikulixapi.jar in the same folder on the command line, this works (for windows, use ; instead of : as the "path separator"):
java -cp karate.jar:sikulixapi.jar com.intuit.karate.Main test.feature
For those looking to customize the classpath for the Visual Studio Code "Karate Runner" extension, please refer this: https://github.com/intuit/karate/wiki/Karate-Robot-Windows-Install-Guide#change-command-line-settings
Also see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/58398958/143475
For those who really don't want to compile Java but need to use some JVM libraries, it is possible via pure JS, (but hard to troubleshoot and debug): https://stackoverflow.com/a/65035825/143475