NAME

       Test::BDD::Cucumber::Manual::Steps - How to write Step Definitions

VERSION

       version 0.17

INTRODUCTION

       The 'code' part of a Cucumber test-suite are the Step Definition files which match steps,
       and execute code based on them. This document aims to give you a quick overview of those.

STARTING OFF

       Most of your step files will want to start something like:

        #!perl

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use Test::More;
        use Test::BDD::Cucumber::StepFile;
        use Method::Signatures;

       The fake shebang line gives some hints to syntax highlighters, and "use strict;" and "use
       warnings;" are hopefully fairly standard at this point.

       Most of my Step Definition files make use of Test::More, but you can use any Test::Builder
       based testing module. Your step will pass its pass or fail status back to its harness via
       Test::Builder - each step is run as if it were its own tiny test file, with its own
       localized Test::Builder object.

       Test::BDD::Cucumber::StepFile gives us the functions "Given()", "When()", "Then()" and
       "Step()". These pass the step definitions to the class loading the step definitions, and
       specify which Step Verb should be used - "Step()" matches any.

       Method::Signatures allows us to use a small amount of syntactic sugar for the step
       definitions, and gives us the "func()" keyword you'll see in a minute.

STEP DEFINITIONS

        Given qr/I have (\d+)/, func ($c) {
           $c->stash->{'scenario'}->{'count'} += $1;
        }

        When "The count is an integer", func ($c) {
           $c->stash->{'scenario'}->{'count'} =
               int( $c->stash->{'scenario'}->{'count'} );
        }

        Then qr/The count should be (\d+)/, func ($c) {
           is( $c->stash->{'scenario'}->{'count'}, $c->matches->[0], "Count matches" );
        }

       Each of the exported verb functions accept a regular expression (or a string that's used
       as one), and a coderef. The coderef is passed a single argument, the
       Test::BDD::Cucumber::StepContext object. To make this a little prettier, we use
       Method::Signatures's "func()" keyword so we're not continually typing: "sub { my $c =
       shift; ... ".

       We will evaluate the regex immediately before we execute the coderef, so you can use $1,
       $2, $etc, although these are also available via the StepContext.

NEXT STEPS

       How step files are loaded is discussed in Test::BDD::Cucumber::Manual::Architecture, but
       isn't of much interest. Of far more interest should be seeing what you have available in
       Test::BDD::Cucumber::StepContext...

AUTHOR

       Peter Sergeant "pete@clueball.com"

LICENSE

       Copyright 2011, Peter Sergeant; Licensed under the same terms as Perl