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Behavior Driven Development or popularly known as BDD, is a widely used development approach in the software industry as it empowers its user to write cases in plain English language. This helps team members even with no technical know-how to understand what is going on in the project that closes the gap between businesspeople and technical people
In addition to a low technicality and easier to understand approach, the main advantage of BDD is that it transpires from TDD ie. Test-Driven Development, which supports automated testing with multiple test data with minimum intervention in code.
BDD (Behavior Driven Development) Framework
BDD framework i.e., Behavior Driven Development is a software development approach that allows the tester/business analyst to create test cases in simple text language (English).
BDD transpires from the TDD i.e., Test Driven Development which allows the users to work with multiple test data with minimum intervention in the software code and thereby helps to increase the reusability of the code, which is a time-saving mechanism in software development/ test automation.
Before the BDD framework, everyone was using TDD. TDD works fine in software development, provided the stakeholders are familiar with the framework being used and their technical knowledge is sufficient. However, this may not be the case always.
What is Gherkin Language?
Gherkin is a business readable language which helps you to describe business behavior without going into details of implementation. It is a domain specific language for defining tests in Cucumber format for specifications. It uses plain language to describe use cases and allows users to remove logic details from behavior tests.
Given – When – Then Approach
Given: Some given context (Preconditions).
When: Some Action is performed (Actions)
Then: Outcome/consequence after the above step
Cucumber reads Gherkin document and executes a test to validate that the software behaves as per the Gherkin syntax.
Important Terms used in Gherkin
Scenario
Given
When
Then
The naming convention is used for feature name. However, there is no set rules in Cucumber about names.
Important Terms used in Gherkin
Scenario
Scenario makes the core of Gherkin structure. It describes the functionality that is under test. Main aim of a scenario is to be able to make the viewer understand what is being tested and how. The scenario keyword is followed by an optional title
Given:
The use of Given keyword is to put the system in a familiar state before the user starts interacting with the system. However, you can omit writing user interactions in Given steps if Given in the "Precondition" step.
When:
When the step is to define action performed by the user.
Then:
The use of 'then' keyword is to see the outcome after the action in when step.
Gherkin Examples
Example 1:
Feature: Login functionality of social networking site Facebook.
Given: I am a Facebook user.
When: I enter username as username.
And I enter the password as the password
Then I should be redirected to the home page of Facebook
Example 2:
Given The login page is opening
When I input username, password and click the Login button
Then I am on the Homepage
Best practices of using Gherkin
Each scenario should execute separately
Every feature should be able to be executed along
Step’s information should be shown independently
Connect your Scenario's with your requirements
Create modular and easy to understand steps
Advantages of Gherkin
Gherkin is simple enough for non-programmers to understand
Programmers can use it as a very solid base to start their tests
It makes User Stories easier to digest
Gherkin script can easily understand by business executives and developers
Gherkin Testing targets the business requirements