Automation Strategy: Cucumber for Testing - You're (Very Possibly) Doing it Wrong

Potential Issues

The first time I worked on test automation was around 2006, and when I started seeing people using Cucumber I didn't get it.  I always thought there were a lot of problems with thinking that a human-readable English DSL (domain-specific language) was going to solve your problems.  The most immediate one was that English doesn't compile.  Enter Step Definitions, which take a lot of time to write, translating the English to the method calls in your code.  In addition, having everyone agree on the exact syntax of the Gherkin seemed like a huge challenge.  For the simplest case of being logged in, is it "Given I am logged in" or "Given I'm already logged in" or "Given I have logged in?"  All of this just to have tests written in English... no way.

Flows

I have been using Flows in addition to or instead of Page Objects in my frameworks for years, and I wanted to show someone a side-by-side comparison of my Flow methods calls vs Gherkin.  Here's the example from a test a few companies ago.  This (flow code) is actual code from the test.

Gherkin	Using Flows
Given a user is logged in	flow.login(user01)
When a user adds a pen to the cart	flow.add_to_cart(pen)
And the user checks out	checkout_total = flow.checkout()
Then the receipt is viewable	flow.verify_receipt_exists()
And the cart is empty	flow.verify_cart_is_empty()
And the receipt total equals the order total	flow.verify_receipt_total_equals(checkout_total)

The beauty of having this flow class is that with a decent IDE, you type "flow." and you'll be given a list of all the methods in the class, which is easier than remembering the exact Gherkin phrase.

I had been having these thoughts for a while.  I have never seen people using Cucumber but always wanted to.  Some people I know and respect say it's useful or that they've seen it done.  Then I saw this post* by Aslak Hellesøy, the author of Cucumber, and was so happy to have my beliefs confirmed.  It's a quick read, but basically he says if you're just using Cucumber for automated testing, you're missing the point.

Cucumber is a BDD tool, and the automated tests are a byproduct of the process.  If the testing team is the ones "doing Cucumber" you likely need to reevaluate your situation.  Using Cucumber correctly involves buy-in from product and development as well as QA.

For more on Flow vs Page Object, check our my post here.

*web archive of Aslak's post