Writing code for your test cases

▼ Web Test Automation Tutorial

► Installing ruby with cucumber

  Getting Started

  Creating your first ta project

  Exploring your first cucumber project

  Writing code for your test cases

This page will describe how you can start putting actions behind the steps you have written in `Writing_gherkin_test_cases_in_cucumber`.

Making a custom step

Let's start by creating a new scenario in 1_basic.feature:

  @example1337
  Scenario: example1337 - Going to the Execute scenarios page on TA.info
    Given the user is on the website testautomation.info
    When the user clicks on "A new scenario" in the side menu
    Then title "Writing code for your test cases" should display

And run the scenario in the console: bundle exec cucumber -t @example1337. This will result saying that there are 3 undefined steps, with the code to use to define the steps.

You can implement step definitions for undefined steps with these snippets:

Given(/^the user is on the website testautomation\.info$/) do
  pending # Write code here that turns the phrase above into concrete actions
end

When(/^the user clicks on "([^"]*)" in the side menu$/) do |arg1|
  pending # Write code here that turns the phrase above into concrete actions
end

Then(/^title "([^"]*)" should display$/) do |arg1|
  pending # Write code here that turns the phrase above into concrete actions
end

To copy text from console in windows, right click in console and select Mark. Then select the area you want to copy and press Enter. The selected text is now on the clipboard and can be pasted using Ctrl+V.

Now we have the step definitions written down, we can start adding code to the steps. First create a new file ./features/step_definitions/tutorial_steps.rb and add the following:

Given(/^the user is on the website testautomation\.info$/) do
  browser.goto 'http://www.testautomation.info/'
end

When(/^the user clicks on "(.*?)" in the side menu$/) do |menuitem|
  sidebar = browser.wait(:like => [:div, :id, 'mw-panel'])
  browser.find(
           :a => {:text => /#{menuitem}/i},
           :context => sidebar
  ).click
end

Then(/^title "([^"]*)" should display$/) do |arg1|
  browser.wait(:like => [:h1, :text, arg1])
end

Now run the scenario again: bundle exec cucumber -t @example1337

1 scenario (1 passed)
3 steps (3 passed)
0m8.114s

Advanced steps & code

Regular expressions in Step definitions

Step definitions are made using regular expressions, meaning, you can put in code to catch multiple cases. For example, when you write (.*) it mean any character of any length can be here. To learn more about regular expressions, go to http://rubular.com/

Lapis Lazuli

In the example above some simple code is used to change page and to click on an element. The are many many more options to use Lapis Lazuli. Besides finding an element or waiting for an element to become present. You can also select multiple elements and then interact with a random element.

During your time working with test automation you will start using all these different options. You can find the documentation on this same Wiki. See: Lapis_Lazuli:Usage

Debugging

Some scenario's take a long time to execute and something is going wrong at the end of that scenario. Instead of running that scenario over and over again, it is easier to debug the code from the step that is going wrong.

More info: debugging_code_in_test_automation