Is it acceptable to write a "Given When Then When Then" test in Gherkin?
Is it acceptable to write a "Given When Then When Then" test in Gherkin? A real-life example is as follows all AllPlayers.com
Scenario: Successfully register a user
Given I am on homepage
And I am not logged into an account
When I follow "create a new account"
And I fill in "First Name" with "Bobby"
And I fill in "Last Name" with "Bricks"
And I fill in "E-mail" with "[email protected]"
And I select "Jun" from "Birthday Month"
And I select "22" from "Birthday Day"
And I select "1985" form "Birthday Year"
And I select "Male" from "Gender"
And I fill in "Password" with "123testing"
And I fill in "Confirm Password" with "123testing"
And I solve the captcha math problem
And I click "Create new account"
Then I should see "the user dashboard"
And I should see the Registration Wizard
When I push "Proceed to next step"
Then the "First Name" field should contain "Bobby"
And the "Last Name" field should contain "Bricks".
I know it works using behat, so parsing it isn't a problem. I'm just trying to write better tests. I could write in the first then And the Registration Wizard should be filled out with data but that doesn't seem specific enough...
Suggestions?
Answer
It depends on the target audience of the feature as written. It seems highly likely that the gherkin you've got there was not written with a stakeholder (i.e. somebody not-techie but has a vested interest in the business and the website). BDD is really about the conversation about requirements and expectations - and Gherkin is a tool which gives a standard/recognised way that everyone should be able to read that you can write the requirements and expectations; in a way that serves as automated tests for a developer and perhaps test scripts for a tester.
Trying to take my developer hat off now - I would say that a business stakeholder would rather read, and understand easily...
Scenario: Should be able to successfully register on website
Given I am new to the website
And I want to register for a user account
When I go to the registration form
And I complete all the required registration details correctly
Then I will be registered on the website
And I will be automatically logged in
You can still build the same test behind the scenes of this specification - but this specification has larger readership, it is a more easily understood requirement that anyone should understand. I'm not saying what you have got has no value - far from it. It will be a very valid test. But it is quite developer specific, and highly coupled to the UI implementation (if you refactor/redesign the UI, you now need to refactor your Requirements...).
I started off having plenty of gherkin specifications much like yours - and I still use them on occasion. Once your testing framework has built up a little gherkin is a really great way of kind of writing data-driven/configurable unit tests; and they still have great value to my development process. But I do try to separate the more "pure" specifications from my "developer" ones - but folder and tags/categories.
Edit: I guess in summary what I'm getting at is... what you have is a great "test", but a fairly bad "requirement". Stick with it though!