Creating a Scenario with the And and But keywords

When we specify a business requirement, sometimes there are multiple pre-conditions, user actions, and expected outcomes. So how do we write these specifications in Cucumber?

Getting ready…

Based on what we have learned so far we know how to create Scenarios with one Given, When, and Then keyword. Now, if we need to add multiple Steps, then we can update our Feature file like this:

Feature: login Page
  In order to test login page
  As a Registered user
  I want to specify the login conditions

  Scenario: without and & but
    Given user is on Application landing page
    Given Sign in button is present on screen
    When user clicks on Sign in button
    Then user can see login screen
    When user enters "ShankarGarg" in username field
    When user enters "123456" in password field
    When user clicks Sign in button
    Then user is on home page
    Then title of home page is "GitHub"

The problem here is that the keywords Given, When, and Then are repeated and the readability is thus affected. Having readable Feature files is one of biggest advantages of Cucumber. So how do we maintain the readability of Feature files? Let's figure this out in this recipe.

How to do it…

In this recipe, we are going to add one more Scenario and will use the And and But keywords:

Feature: login Page
  In order to test login page
  As a Registered user
  I want to specify the login conditions

  Scenario: with and & but
    Given user is on Application landing page
    And Sign in button is present on screen
    When user clicks on Sign in button
    Then user is displayed login screen
    When user enters "ShankarGarg" in username field
    And user enters "123456" in password field
    And user clicks Sign in button
    Then user is on home page
    And title of home page is "GitHub"
    But Sign in button is not present

How it works…

The And and But keywords will be useful here. These keywords help to increase the expressiveness and readability of the Feature file:

• And: This is used for statements that are an addition to the previous Steps and represent positives statements.
• But: This is used for statements that are an addition to previous Steps and represent negative statements.

Note

In a Step Definitions file, And and But are listed as Given/When/Then, the keyword that they appear after. There are no And and But keywords in Step Definitions.