Making dynamic code in Cucumber with the Page Object Model - selenium

Question

Is there a way perform actions dynamically using Cucumber?
Example:
Feature File:
Scenario: Click all the boxes
Given On the checkbox page
When Click checkboxA
And Click checkboxB
Step Definition:
#When("Click checkboxA")
public void clickCheckBoxA()
{
pageObject.checkBoxA.click();
}
#And("Click checkboxB")
public void clickCheckBoxB()
{
pageObject.checkBoxB.click();
}
In this scenario, there are two very similar step definitions. The reason why there are two different definitions is because each WebElement is defined in the pageObject Class. Is there a way to dynamically pass which checkbox we want to click, rather than having two separate methods performing the same action?
The only way I can think to do this is by passing a selector as a parameter in the feature step and instantiating the webElement within the step definition method. But that seems like bad practice to me.

Answer 1

Click is your step. It should not be unique for each item you may want to click. You should match what you want to click with a regular expression. The following combines your two steps into one.
#When("^Click (.*)$")
public void clickElement(String elementToClick) {
switch (elementToClick) {
case "checkBoxA":
pageObject.checkBoxA.click();
case "checkBoxB":
pageObject.checkBoxB.click();
}
}
I'd suggest using a smarter regex match (this one is lazy and sloppy) and you could also create a new variable for the element to be clicked, assign its value to your existing element in each case and have a single call to click() after the switch statement.
Regarding your question of doing this "dynamically," you cannot do so in Java (I think you were thinking of having a single line in the example I gave above of pageObject.elementToClick.click();?) because it's a compiled programming language; your code can't be altered at runtime.

Answer 2

I would prefer to use #mike's solution, but in some cases I tend to create a locator as string in POM so that it reduces lines of code in the step definition.
Feature File:
Scenario: Click all the boxes
Given On the checkbox page
When Click checkbox A
And Click checkbox B
POM:
private String checkBox = "//input[text()='checkBox%s']";
Step Definition:
#When("Click checkbox (.*)")
public void handleCheckBox(String checkBoxName) {
driver.findElement(By.xpath(String.format(checkBox, checkBoxName))).click();
}