@Before doesn't execute in java Cucumber Step

1. Make sure you are using cucumber.annotation.Before rather than org.junit.Before. Cucumber will not process JUnit annotations. (More information in the Scenario Hooks section of this blog post.)

2. Make sure your @Before method is public, not private.

Hello I know that is an old post, but none of these solutions work for me. So I'm going to share my solution.

I created the class Hooks under the package: com.mycompany.automation.util

package com.mycompany.automation.util;

import com.mycompany.automation.rest.database.AS400DBManager;
import cucumber.api.java.After;
import java.sql.SQLException;

/**
 * @author <a href="[email protected]">Julian Mesa</a>
 * @version 0.1.0
 * @since 0.1.0
 */

    public class Hooks {

      @After
      public void beforeScenario() throws SQLException, ClassNotFoundException {
        System.out.print("Closing connection.");
        AS400DBManager.getInstance().closeConnection();
      }

    }

and then I specified the package in the glue options in the runner:

@RunWith(CucumberWithSerenity.class)
@CucumberOptions(
    features = "src/test/resources/features",
    glue = {"com.mycompany.automation.features.steps",
        "com.mycompany.automation.util"}
)

And it worked.

There is an accepted answer to this question, but I wanted to point out the comment made by Matt Watson which solved the issue for me and for which I have not seen similar advice elsewhere:

I've had a play about with some of my cucumber-jvm tests and I think I've spotted it. Your @Before method should be public rather than private

The @Before method must be public.