Quality Assurance/Writing feature descriptions



All you need to start contributing to browser testing is a browser :) and knowledge of plain English. Yes, it's that simple.

Browser testing is all automated. We use Cucumber to check whether software features behave as expected. What Cucumber needs are descriptions of how features should behave. Makes sense, right? Here you have instructions to start contributing feature descriptions. If you need help just ask in the |Discussion page.

Contributors willing to go a step further can help converting the plain English descriptions to Cucumber compatible syntax. Check the Executable specifications section below.

Ruby developers and other contributors familiar with Page Objects and Cucumber can check the documentation for running tests and writing tests.

Plain English
Acceptance Test Driven Development starts with a clear description of how a feature should behave. These plain-language specifications are the most important part of the whole project. The better the specifications of the behavior of particular features, the better the automated tests will be! For example, we might describe how Search should work in any given wiki:

On any random page in any wiki, type "main" into the search box. A list of results should appear, and "Main Page" should be the top result. On another random page in any wiki, type "ma" into the search box and click the Search icon. I should then be on a page with a set of search results, and "Main Page" should be one of the results."

Executable specifications
For those interested in going deeper, there is a formal syntax for making executable specifications in Cucumber. You can find documentation and tutorials in the Cucumber website but you can cover the basics with a short introduction.

Cucumber demands specifications in a particular form, Given/When/Then:


 * A Given statement should only ever mention starting conditions.
 * A When statement should always be some sort of verb, or action.
 * A Then statement always has the words "should" or "should not", or equivalent.

Feature: My Feature Scenario: Testing some aspect of My Feature Given When  Then 

Any Given/When/Then statement may also have an arbitrary number of "And" clauses:

Scenario: Testing some complicated aspect of My Feature Given And When  And  And  Then  And 

So the example description we gave above, for Search, becomes this automated test:

Feature: Search

Scenario: Search suggestions Given I am at random page When I search for: main Then a list of suggested pages should appear And Main Page should be the first result

Scenario: Fill in search term and click search Given I am at random page When I search for: ma     And I click the Search button Then I should land on Search Results page

Please add also these Given/When/Then specifications to Talk:Quality Assurance/Browser testing/Writing tests.

For more examples of how to make Given/When/Then specifications, see our existing Feature files.