Cucumbersome

There is a REST service that we test with cucumber, using cucumber.js. The first implementation was very REST oriented. Reuse of the tests for the user interface was pretty much impossible because the tests were technical, not functional. For that reason we label non functional tests cucumbersome.

This is an example of the first technical oriented tests:

@events

Feature: Fetch the root document

 As an API client of the Eventr API

 I want to fetch the events listing document
Scenario: Get the events root document

 When I GET the path "/events"

 Then the http status should be 200

 And the value of total_rows should be ">= 0"

 And the value of offset should be ">= 0"

While this is pretty easy to implement, and it does it's job, it mostly resembles the unit tests already in place.

Better is to rewrite the test focussing on the functionality, for example:

Scenario: Create a new event

 Given there are 0 events

 When I create a new event

 Then there will be 1 event

And even more functional:

Scenario: Buy tickets

 Given There is an event with name "ASAS 2014" with a ticket price of 200 EUR

 When I buy 2 tickets

 Then I will have to pay 400 EUR

The REST implementation is done and working fine. If you are interested, check out the code gists for world and step definitions.

Our next challenge is to reuse the tests for the user interface using zombie or the likes.