Question

specflow looks like a solution I want my team to consider using. My manager, however, isn’t real fond of BDD-style tests. Because of the nice integration of specflow with visual studio, I’m wondering if I could leverage the specflow framework while allowing a less bdd-style form of tests.

For example, instead of writing a test like:

Scenario: Help->About
  Given a user is logged in to "http://..." as "user/password"
    And they are on the page titled "Home"
   When I click on "about"
   Then I should see a window titled "about"

… I would like to write it as:

Scenario: Help->About
  log in to "http://..." as "user/password"
  click on the "About" link
  assert "About" window should be visible

In other words, must I use keywords like Given, Then, etc. or is specflow able to handle steps that don’t begin with those words?

Answer 1

Specflow uses the Given, When and Then keywords in the code generator to generate a test case like this:

    [NUnit.Framework.TestAttribute()]
    [NUnit.Framework.DescriptionAttribute("See the content of a message")]
    public virtual void SeeTheContentOfAMessage()
    {
        TechTalk.SpecFlow.ScenarioInfo scenarioInfo = new TechTalk.SpecFlow.ScenarioInfo("Help->About", ((string[])(null)));
        this.ScenarioSetup(scenarioInfo);
        testRunner.Given("a user is logged in to \"http://\" as user/password");
        testRunner.When("I click on About"); 
        testRunner.Then("I should see a window titled about");
        testRunner.CollectScenarioErrors();
    }

The only way to change the tests to the way you described is by changing the code generator. The TryParseStepKeyword() method in GherkinDialect is a good start