BDD with Gherkin, Cucumber

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Aug 2023

Adopt

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is a collaborative approach to software development that bridges the communication gap between business and IT. BDD helps teams focus on delivering features that truly matter by emphasizing the behavior of an application from the end user's perspective.

Gherkin is Cucumber's language to define test cases. It's designed to be easy to read and lets you write scripts in a natural language style.

Cucumber is a tool that supports BDD. It reads Gherkin documents and validates that the code performs as expected.

Cypress is an end-to-end testing framework that can be used alongside Gherkin and Cucumber for testing web applications. It's popular for its easy setup and fast, reliable testing capabilities. Cypress can validate various aspects of your application, ranging from the UI functionality to complete workflows.

Playwright is another powerful tool for end-to-end testing that complements BDD approaches. With support for multiple browsers, headless testing, and API controls, Playwright offers robust testing capabilities for both simple and complex applications.

Adopting BDD, Gherkin, Cucumber, Cypress, and Playwright in our workflow allows for a clear understanding and discussion of requirements across the team, including non-technical stakeholders. This fosters collaboration and helps prevent miscommunication. Automated testing through Gherkin, Cucumber, Cypress, and Playwright also encourages the development of more robust, bug-free software.

However, BDD is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It works best when the team is committed to the collaborative approach and when complex business rules need to be understood by all stakeholders.