Sometimes cucumber’s Before hook just doesn’t cut it. Here’s a nice hack that allows you to perform some logic during execution of cucumber scenarios when a tag is first come across:

It’s a cucumber formatter that detects when a tag is first come across. When a new tag is found, the perform_logic_for method is called, passing the tag to it. Once you’re in the perform_logic_for method, you can do what you like. I’m doing stuff like checking to see if a directory matches the tag name; if I find one, I load the data into an environment (a great example of when the Before tag isn’t enough). You have free reign in here to do what you like with the tag.

To use it, save the file to features/support/tag_logic.rb, add your own tag logic, and then execute it with:

#cucumber -f pretty -f TestManagement::TagLogic -o /dev/null

I hope that helps!

Small print:
Use the Before hook instead of this if you possibly can.