Cucumber Recipes: Automate Anything with BDD Tools and Techniques (Pragmatic Programmers) - Softcover

Dees, Ian; Wynne, Matt; Hellesoy, Aslak

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937785017 ISBN 13: 9781937785017

Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2013

Synopsis

You can test just about anything with Cucumber. We certainly have, and in Cucumber Recipes we'll show you how to apply our hard-won field experience to your own projects. Once you've mastered the basics, this book will show you how to get the most out of Cucumber--from specific situations to advanced test-writing advice. With over forty practical recipes, you'll test desktop, web, mobile, and server applications across a variety of platforms. This book gives you tools that you can use today to automate any system that you encounter, and do it well.

The Cucumber Book showed you how your team can work together to write executable specifications--documents that tell a clear story and also happen to be working test code. We'll arm you with ready-rolled solutions to real-world problems: your tests will run faster, read more clearly, and work in any environment.

Our first tips will help you fit Cucumber into your workflow. Powerful filters will tame tables full of test data, transforming them into the format your application needs. Custom output formatters will generate reports for any occasion. Continuous Integration servers will run your Cucumber tests every time the code changes. Next, you'll find recipes tailored to the platform you're running on. Ever wanted to know how to test a Grails app from Cucumber? Need to put a Windows program through its paces? How about a mobile app running on Android or iOS? We'll show you how to do all of these.

Throughout the book, you'll see how to make Cucumber sing as you interoperate with different platforms, languages, and environments. From embedded circuits to Python and PHP web apps, Cucumber has something for you.

What You Need:

You'll need basic working knowledge of Cucumber and Ruby. Individual recipes may have additional requirements; for example, a recipe on Windows automation might pull in an open source GUI driver.

We've written the recipes for compatibility with Ruby 1.9.3 and 1.8.7, plus Cucumber 1.1.4. Other versions may work as well, but these are the ones we test with.

About this title

From the Author

Q & A With Matt and IanQ. Why do you use Cucumber?Ian: I use it because it keeps my automated tests readable and usable, even years after I've written them.Q. Why did you decide to write this book?Matt: When Aslak and I wrote the first Cucumber Book, we wanted to include a selection of guides to using Cucumber in different situations. Once we started to write them, we realized there were so many different ways you can use Cucumber! That's when we decided these guides deserved a whole book of their own.Q. How do you each use Cucumber in your jobs?Matt: I run an online collaboration tool called Relish that helps teams share their living documentation (written in Cucumber) with non-technical stakeholders. Of course, I use Cucumber on a daily basis to drive out new features for the product.I also work as a trainer and consultant, traveling to teams who want to use Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). I get to see a lot of the good and bad practices out there, and I get great feedback about how the tool is being used by people.Ian: I work at a test and measurement hardware company. We use a lot of different automation frameworks, but the projects that use Cucumber consistently have the most readable test cases--the kind that can be shared among engineering, marketing, and testing groups.Q. What's in store for Cucumber in the future?Matt: We're working on a new, faster parser, which will allow more customizable behavior such as running scenarios in random order.We're aiming to make Cucumber's core code more lightweight, with better APIs and extension points. This way, we can make Cucumber more powerful without adding a maintenance burden. I'd also like to see much better tools for running and reviewing features--maybe even monitoring a running Cucumber suite from your web browser!

About the Author

Ian Dees was first bitten by the programming bug in 1986 on a Timex Sinclair 1000, and has been having a blast in his software apprenticeship ever since. By day, Ian slings code, tests, and puns at a Portland-area test equipment manufacturer. By night, he converts espresso into programming books, including Scripted GUI Testing With Ruby and Using JRuby.

Matt Wynne is a leading BDD practitioner, a member of the Cucumber core team, and a programmer, coach, trainer, and popular international speaker. Alongside Aslak Hellesøy and Julien Biezemans, Matt is co-founder of Cucumber Ltd., the company behind Cucumber. Matt tweets from @mattwynne and @cucumberbdd.

Aslak Hellesoy is the creator of Cucumber. During his career Aslak has worked with both small and large organizations in industries such as telecom, trading, insurance, car manufacturing, education, and government. Aslak is co-founder of Cucumber Ltd, the company behind Cucumber. He tweets from @aslak_hellesoy and @cucumberbdd.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1937785017
• ISBN 13: 9781937785017
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276