Month: October 2012

Earlier this week, I wrote about how to create and populate objects from tables created in your SpecFlow scenarios. If the only reason you’re populating an object is to do a comparison, there’s an easier way: the CompareToInstance<T> method.

Similar to the previously discussed method, CreateInstance<T>, an object will be created using the properties contained in a table of values. The object properties will be matched ignoring case and whitespace. CompareToInstance allows you to provide an instance of the same type and does a property-by-property comparison. If any of the property values are different, a TechTalk.SpecFlow.Assist.ComparisonException is thrown with a message containing all differences that were found.

Here’s an example!

Scenario: Update a person name
	Given I have an existing person
	And I change the name to the following
		| first | middle | last  |
		| Ftest | Mtest  | Ltest |
	When I save the person
	And I retrieve person
	Then the name was changed to the following
		| first | middle | last  |
		| Ftest | Mtest  | Ltest |

// don't forget!
// using TechTalk.SpecFlow.Assist;

[Given(@"I change the name to the following")]
public void GivenIChangeTheNameToTheFollowing(Table table)
{
    var p = ScenarioContext.Current.Get<Person>();
    p.Name = table.CreateInstance<NameType>();
}

[Then(@"the name was changed to the following")]
public void ThenTheNameWasChangedToTheFollowing(Table table)
{
    var p = ScenarioContext.Current.Get<Person>();
    table.CompareToInstance<NameType>(p.Name);
}

Steps are the building blocks of SpecFlow. Each Given/When/Then line in a SpecFlow scenario represents a step, and steps should be reused across features and scenarios to test your application from different angles. When you’re building a low-level scenario, you may want to use very specific steps. In a higher-level feature, you may want to perform the same tasks but in a less granular fashion. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could create a “super-step” that just calls the necessary sub-steps?

Well, guess what? You can, and it’s really easy to do. First, let’s build some fake code to work with. I created a simple PersonRepository that lets me add and save Person objects. Here are the classes and my initial SpecFlow test.

Person.cs

using System;

namespace samples.SpecFlowDemo
{
    public class Person
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }

        public string Name { get; set; }

        public DateTime? DateOfBirth { get; set; }
    }
}

PersonRepository.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace samples.SpecFlowDemo
{
    public static class PersonRepository
    {
        private static readonly Dictionary<int, Person> Persons;

        static PersonRepository()
        {
            Persons = new Dictionary<int, Person>();
        }

        public static Person Get(int id)
        {
            if (!Persons.ContainsKey(id))
            {
                return null;
            }
            return Persons[id];
        }

        public static bool Save(Person person)
        {
            if (person == null)
            {
                return false;
            }
            if (!Persons.ContainsKey(person.Id))
            {
                Persons.Add(person.Id, person);
            }
            Persons[person.Id] = person;
            return true;
        }
    }
}

Person_Add.feature

Feature: Person_Add
	In order track person records
	As a records manager
	I need to add new persons

Scenario: Add a person
	Given I have a new person record with the following properties
		| id  | name   | date of birth |
		| 100 | Rodney | 2/20/1950     |
	When I save the person
	Then the person is saved successfully
	And I can retrieve the person by ID

Person_AddSteps.cs

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using TechTalk.SpecFlow;
using TechTalk.SpecFlow.Assist;

namespace samples.SpecFlowDemo.SpecFlow
{
    [Binding]
    public class Person_AddSteps
    {
        [Given(@"I have a new person record with the following properties")]
        public void GivenIHaveANewPersonRecordWithTheFollowingProperties(Table table)
        {
            ScenarioContext.Current.Set<Person>(
                table.CreateInstance<Person>());
        }
        
        [When(@"I save the person")]
        public void WhenISaveThePerson()
        {
            var r = PersonRepository.Save(
                ScenarioContext.Current.Get<Person>());
            ScenarioContext.Current.Set<bool>(r, "SaveResult");
        }
        
        [Then(@"the person is saved successfully")]
        public void ThenThePersonIsSavedSuccessfully()
        {
            Assert.IsTrue(
                ScenarioContext.Current.Get<bool>("SaveResult"),
                "SaveResult");
        }
        
        [Then(@"I can retrieve the person by ID")]
        public void ThenICanRetrieveThePersonByID()
        {
            var expected = ScenarioContext.Current.Get<Person>();
            var actual = PersonRepository.Get(expected.Id);
            Assert.AreSame(expected, actual);
        }
    }
}

Now let’s say I want to test the PersonRepository’s ability to update records. In order to update a record, the record needs to exist. I could reuse the add feature’s “I have a person” step with a provided table of properties and its “I save the person” step, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to call both of those steps and provide data each time I needed to do something with an existing record.

I can avoid the repetition by calling those steps from within a new step that I’ll create called “I have an existing person record.” Here’s the code for my update feature.

Person_Update.feature

Feature: Person_Update
	In order track person records
	As a records manager
	I need to update existing persons

Scenario: Update a person
	Given I have an existing person record
	When I change the person name to "Rocko"
	And I save the person
	Then the person is saved successfully
	And I can retrieve the person by ID
	And the person name was saved as "Rocko"

Person_UpdateSteps.cs (Note the highlighted lines. The only “gotcha” that I ran into is that the steps class must inherit from SpecFlow’s Steps class in order to access the Given/When/Then functions.)

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using TechTalk.SpecFlow;

namespace samples.SpecFlowDemo.SpecFlow
{
    [Binding]
    public class Person_UpdateSteps : Steps
    {
        [Given(@"I have an existing person record")]
        public void GivenIHaveAnExistingPersonRecord()
        {
            var header = new[] { "Field", "Value" };
            var t = new Table(header);
            t.AddRow("id", "100");
            t.AddRow("name", "Fred");
            t.AddRow("date of birth", "12/15/1990");

            Given("I have a new person record with the following properties", t);
            When("I save the person");
        }
        
        [When(@"I change the person name to ""(.*)""")]
        public void WhenIChangeThePersonNameTo(string p0)
        {
            var p = ScenarioContext.Current.Get<Person>();
            p.Name = p0;
        }
                
        [Then(@"the person name was saved as ""(.*)""")]
        public void ThenThePersonNameWasSavedAs(string p0)
        {
            var p = ScenarioContext.Current.Get<Person>();
            Assert.AreEqual(p0, p.Name);
        }
    }
}

You can read more about calling steps from step definitions in the SpecFlow documentation.

You can also download the code for this example from GitHub.

SpecFlow is definitely my favorite new tool for 2012. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. If you’ve checked it out and still don’t get it, come talk to me. I love writing scenarios using business language to help guide my test-driven development. The integration-level tests are proving to be an awesome supplement to more traditional isolated unit tests.

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with a good scenario step because you need to specify several details. Don’t worry, though–SpecFlow’s got ya covered with its Assist Helpers. Let’s say I’m working on some code that has a configuration object that contains my application’s settings. When I’m writing a feature scenario, I might want to provide these settings. I can do just that by putting the details into a table in my scenario.

Configuration.cs

public class Configuration
{
    public string OutputDir { get; set; }
    public bool Enabled { get; set; }
}

Feature1.feature

Scenario: CreateInstance demo
    Given I have the following configuration
        | output dir | enabled |
        | c:\blah    | true    |
    When I do something
    Then what I expected to happen happened

In my step definition, I can import the TechTalk.SpecFlow.Assist namespace to use Assist Helpers like the CreateInstance&lt;T&gt; extension method. When called on a table, CreateInstance will match columns to properties to create and populate an object. Here’s how I use it with the above example:

[Given(@"I have the following configuration")]
public void GivenIHaveTheFollowingConfiguration(Table table)
{
    var config = table.CreateInstance();
}

When creating the object, case-sensitivity and whitespace are ignored, allowing you to create a human-friendly table of your object’s property values. You can also use a vertical table with properties listed as rows. This table will produce the same result as above:

Scenario: CreateInstance demo
    Given I have the following configuration
        | Field      | Value   |
        | output dir | c:\blah |
        | enabled    | true    |
    When I do something
    Then what I expected to happen happened

This technique allows you to create complex objects without having to write any code. You can create highly re-usable steps that rely on the scenario author to provide necessary details in the scenario itself. Simply awesome!