Specflow custom tool error when adding "Examples:"

NikolaiDante picture NikolaiDante · May 11, 2016 · Viewed 10.1k times · Source

I have this specification:

Feature: Homepage
    As a webiste user
    I want to see a pretty homepage

Scenario: Homepage Display
    Given I am on an ecommerce <website>
    When I look at the content
    Then I should see a swiper

Examples: 
| Description | website             |
| Local       | localhost:9000      |
| Development | dev.mysite.com      |

But Visual Studio 2015 won't build it says:

Custom tool error: (10:1): expected: #EOF, #TableRow, #DocStringSeparator, #StepLine, #TagLine, #ScenarioLine, #ScenarioOutlineLine, #Comment, #Empty, got 'Examples:'

If I remove Examples: it is OK.

As far as I can tell the specification looks to be the correct syntax, but I only started to explore this yesterday so I've probably made a basic error. I can right click on the scenario and generate step code OK, which all looks reasonable.

I am using, from NuGet:

  • SpecFlow 2.0.0
  • SpecFlow.MsTest 2.0.0

and from Extensions and Updates:

  • SpecFlow for Visual Studio 2015, version 2015.1.2

and I Used "Unit Test Project", Framework 4.5.1 to create my project.


What am I doing wrong?

Answer

devtony picture devtony · May 11, 2016

Examples can only be used with Scenario Outlines. Scenario Outlines are ways to run a scenario with different data sets.

If you change Scenario to Scenario Outline your example will work:

Feature: Homepage
    As a webiste user
    I want to see a pretty homepage

Scenario Outline: Homepage Display
    Given I am on an ecommerce <website>
    When I look at the content
    Then I should see a swiper

Examples: 
| Description | website             |
| Local       | localhost:9000      |
| Development | dev.mysite.com      |

The GitHub Cucumber page has a good explanation of Scenario Outlines: https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Scenario-outlines