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Cucumber Basics

Plan​

Learn the basics of Cucumber

Prerequisites​

Practice​

Setup

  • Create a Maven project

  • mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.tryonyourown.cucumber.basics -DartifactId=CucumberBasics -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false

  • Add dependencies into pom.xml

    • cucumber-java
    • cucumber-junit

Notes​

  • Cucumber provides a common interface for Business, QA and Developers

  • Also use it for requirement analysis

  • Encourages team to use conversations and concrete examples to build up a shared understanding

  • BDD style

    • Given, When, Then, Feature, Featue File, Scenario, Scenario Outline

    • Use And for multiple pre conditions or actions of positive type

    • Use But for multiple pre conditions or actions of negative type

    • Step Definition file will have the actual code

    • One to one mapping for step definition and its implementation

    • Feature - A high level business requirement

    • Feature file contains multiple scenarios

    • Feature file will have .feature as extension

    • TidyGherkin Chrome plugin. Generates step definitions implementation template from feature file input

    • Test Runner

    • @CucumberOptions

      • features - points to the feature file or the folder
      • glue - points to step definition package name

    • @RunWith

      • Cucumber.class

    • Same step definition can provide different implementaton. This can be achieved by using regular expressions in step definition.

    • Arguments should match with regex

  • Test Runner

    • We provive the info of Feature files and Step Definition files to the Test Runner
    • JUnit and TestNG are examples of test runners
    • Test Runner executes Feature files

  • Provides higher level of abstraction

  • Uses Gherkin syntax

  • Open Source

  • Features

    • Data drivern
    • Parameterization
    • Execution Controls
    • Hooks

  • Gherkin

    • Business readable
    • Domain Specific Language
    • A medium that both computers and humans can understand
    • Helps team colloboration
    • Serves as documentation

  • BDD is more than just using Cucumber

    • Talk about concrete examples of a User Story/ New Functionality to explore, discover and agree on the details of what's expected
    • Over time, the documented examples become an asset that enables your team to continue confidently and rapidly making changes to the system
    • The code reflects the documentation, and the documentation reflects the team’s shared understanding of the problem domain. This shared understanding is constantly evolving.