Cucumber Transforms for Multiple Variable Scenario Outline Examples

Question

I have a set of functionally similar websites that I want to write cucumber specs for to drive both development, and selennium browser tests. The site are in different languages and will have different URLs, but will have mainly the same features.

An example scenario might be

Scenario Outline: Photo Gallery Next Action
  Given I visit a "<photo-gallery-page>"
  When I click "<next-button>" in the gallery
  Then the photo should advance
    Examples:
      | photo-gallery-page | next-button |
      | www.site1.com/photo-gallery | Next |
      | www.site2.com/la-galerie-de-photos | Suivant |

This is fine when I have a small number of scenarios and examples. However I'm anticipating hundred of scenarios and fairly regular launch of new sites. I want to avoid having to edit each scenario to add examples when launching new sites.

I think I need to store all my example variables in a per site configuration, so that I can run the same scenario against all sites. Then I can add new configurations fairly easily and avoid editing all the scenario examples and making them unreadable.

site[:en].photo-gallery-page = 'www.site1.com/photo-gallery'
site[:fr].photo-gallery-page = 'www.site2.com/la-galerie-de-photos'
site[:en].next-button = 'Next'
site[:fr].next-button = 'Suivant'

One option would be to store this config somewhere, then generate the site specific gherkin files using a script. I could then run these generated gherkins which would contain the required examples

I'm wondering if there's an easier way. My other idea was if I can use table transforms to replace the example blocks. I've had a read, but as far as I can tell I can only transform a table (and replace it with a custom code block) if it's an inline table within a step. I can't transform an examples block in the same way.

Have I understood that correctly? Any other suggestions on how best to achieve this?

Tom Tom Tom Tom · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-27T13:09:21

I wonder if there's a better way... This all feels very brittle.

What if:

Given I follow a link to the gallery "MyGallery"
And the gallery "MyGallery" contains the following photos:
|PhotoID|PhotoName|
|1      |MyPhoto1 |
|2      |MyPhoto2 |
And the photo "MyPhoto1" is displayed
When I view the next photo
Then the next photo "MyPhoto2" should be displayed

Note that you've taken out the notion of button names, etc. - implementation details that are presumably better defined in your step definitions. The behaviour you're defining is simply going to a gallery, viewing an image, requesting the next one, viewing the next image. Define how in your step definitions.

There's some reading I found very useful on this topic at http://cuke4ninja.com/. Download the PDF and check out the web automation section (it details the web automation pyramid).

To address your configuration problem, maybe you could define some kind of config. class and supply it to the step definition files via dependency injection. You could make it site specific by loading from different config. files as you suggested in its constructor. Step definitions could pull the relevant site specific data from the config. class' properties. I think this would make your scenario is more readable and less brittle.

Cucumber Transforms for Multiple Variable Scenario Outline Examples

1 Answers