BDD with Cucumber

BDD with Cucumber: An Automation Framework Or A Collaboration Tool?

Spread the love

Behavior Driven Development (BDD) has created a lot of hype in the testing community over the past few years. Certain automation tools started gaining popularity and people even adopted and implemented it in their solutions. Your search for any test automation framework today, chances are it supports BDD. Although BDD with Cucumber has gained in popularity, most of the time people are truly not aware of what it is.

In this post, you will find a better understanding of what a Cucumber BDD framework is, how Cucumber supports BDD processes, and if Cucumber is the right testing tool for you to use.

What is BDD About?

BDD is a process designed to aid the management and the delivery of software development projects by improving communication between business professionals and engineers. In doing so, the Cucumber BDD framework ensures all development projects remain focused on delivering what the business needs while meeting every requirement of the user.

It closes the gap between business and engineers by -

1.Encouraging collaboration to build a shared understanding of the problem to be solved.
2.Working in small iterations to increase feedback and the flow of value.
3.Producing system documentation that gets checked automatically against the system’s behavior.

The idea behind BDD is to combine automated tests, functional requirements, and software documentation into a single format that could easily be understood by engineering teams and non-technical people.

BDD and Test Automation

Now that you know what BDD is all about, let us discuss the role test automation plays in it.

Gherkin is a domain-specific language. It was originally developed and maintained by Cucumber, one of the most popular BDD frameworks. This semi-formal language makes specifications easy to automate and understand by anyone in the team.

The scenarios obtained from ‘Specification by Example’ are grouped into a corresponding feature file in which we define the expected behavior of our application. Scenarios sound like plain English and are meant to be short. Each scenario has the following structure:

1.Given some initial state
2.When an action is taken
3.They verify an outcome

Choosing the Right Tools

You need to choose and use the right set of tools for successfully applying test automation in software projects. This depends entirely on the scope of your project, libraries integration, technology limitations, and the type of testing needed to perform. You need to make sure the tools includes the following features for a good start:

1. Open-source
2. Great documentation
3. Actively maintained repository
4. Seamless integration with CI tools
5. Supports parallel executions

If you are planning to work with a true BDD approach then you should consider using a tool like Cucumber.

If you apply BDD to test automation when there is an improper BDD process, chances are that you will end up dealing with the complexity of a BDD tool and undermining what you are striving to accomplish in the first place.

Cumbersome Syntax: Ignoring rules like writing steps as a subject-predicate action phrase and in a third-person point of view, to meet the requirements of Gherkin syntax can lead to over-complication.

More Dependencies: Limit the number of dependencies your solution has is the key. The more dependencies you have, the higher are the chances for something to go wrong.

An Extra Layer of Complexity: Writing reusable steps is hard and finding a particular step you have already implemented once is even harder. Not only this adds an extra layer of complexity to the test automation solution, but it is definitely not a good practice, no matter what.

Advantages of Using Cucumber with BDD


Cucumber plays a primary role in supporting a behavior-driven development approach. Let’s discuss some of the key advantages of Cucumber for BDD. With Cucumber you can:

1. Write BDD tests in the ubiquitous language, a language structured around the domain model. This language can be understood by all team members including BAs, testers, and developers.
2. Build communication with the technical and non-technical members of your team.
3. Interact directly with the developers’ code, which is written in a language that business stakeholders can understand.
4. Run tests written in a behavior-driven development style.

Things to Keep in Mind When Testing with Cucumber BDD Framework


There are some integral points for a testing team who wants to start with Cucumber -

1. Automation tests are very important and the code should follow coding practice, convention, etc.
2. A good editor should support debugging and editing feature files in normal text format. RubyMine and Aptana are highly recommendable.
3. Make feature files a real ‘communication’ layer, which is a place for receiving test data, formatting test data. No domain business logic is included.
By supporting the communication layer on top of a strong testing framework, Cucumber not only performs automation tests on a wide range of testing fields but also helps to improve the communication among members in the team. And this feature is hardly found in other testing frameworks.


If Cucumber BDD Framework is the right tool for the job, then make sure you follow their best practices and guidelines. Focus on what a user wants to do and not on the implementation details. Write non-conjunctive, reusable steps with a robust structure and clear meaning. Also, make sure to take a good look at Cucumber’s Gherkin reference documentation.

I hope this post helped you better understand BDD with Cucumber. For further information, please give us a call today!

What OdiTek offers


Refer our Skills page:

Behavior Driven Development

BDD (Behavior Driven Development) is a software development process that originally emerged from Test Driven Development (TDD). Behavior Driven Development is written in such a way that it illustrates the behaviour of the system, written in readable and understandable language for everyone involved in the...

more

Client Testimonials

We had a tough deadline to launch our .Net based application that processes a lot of data, and got very frustrated with our development agency we hired. Fortunately we got Oditek, and they took over seamlessly the product development, launched the app & continued feature development. Just awesome!

Neal Bonrud

Co-Founder – SubScreener, USA

They were very attentive to our needs as clients and went out of the way to make sure our projects were taken care of. They were always able to get projects done in the specifications we requested. They are passionate about getting things done; I would definitely recommend them to lead any IT projects.

Dann Manahan

Sr VP Technology- 1031 Crowd Funding

I worked with OdiTek on few high profile banking application projects. They did a fantastic job with web applications & manual testing on the VAS apps for two leading banks of UK that included rigorous UAT phases. I recommend them for any application development where security matters.

Clive Shirley

CTO- Smarta, UK

OdiTek is our extended team who works on our key software projects. They are dependable, good in collaboration and technically very much to the level what we expect a global team should be. They had transformed our web applications, CRM and added mobility to existing business platforms here.

Matt Berry

IT Manager- First Option Online

It's been more than 4 years now that we are working with OdiTek on our cloud based web product development. It's been amazing working together, they are very competent on designing scalable, high performance apps. Their technical support is outstanding to say the least, even at odd hours.

Brad Taylor

CEO- BluesummitTech, USA

I am a fan of Team OdiTek since 2014 and have worked on many product development projects together. Specially worth mentioning their deliveries on VAS Banking web application development & manual testing services for Smarta, UK. They are highly skilled & a professional team to work with.

Tom Bowden

Digital Propositions - HSBC, London

OdiTek has been working on our Integrated Web-scale Mobile Platform i.e. Optimal Health since 2014. They are very professional and takes care of the requirements meticulously. They are technically very sound and sincere in ensuring quality & performance. Wonderful working with them!

Catherine Lim

COO- Medilink Global Sdn Bdh

You can trust the team, with minimum supervision you get the work done. They are honest, professional & committed to schedule & quality. I had been successfully running 3 business applications designed, developed and maintained by Oditek developers. It’s been a pleasure working with them.

Scott Evans

CEO- Pink Storage, UK

OdiTek has been working in custom software development, including services for test automation. Many of them have worked with me in 2009-10 when I was R&D Manager in NetHawk India. They have great enthusiasm & a passion to excel in bringing customer success. Their work has been very impressive.

Karen Hamber

Senior Product Manager- Skype

It's amazing to see these guys are turning their experience into a global delivery excellence at OdiTek. I am sure their past large scale product development experience will be handy to product companies. I would always recommend Oditek for software development, especially performance-driven solutions.

Juha Marjeta

Opti Automation Oyj

If you need additional information or have project requirements, kindly drop an email to: info@oditeksolutions.com

×