Testing the Waterhouse

I recently wrote a little function that takes a screenshot at the end of a test if it has errored. What sounded very simple at the start turned out to be quite a bit of work, and quite a few lines of code to handle certain scenarios! It's now over 50 lines of code! I'll start with what I had at the beginning, this was to simply take a screenshot in the working directory, we are using SpecFlow and Selenium to run the tests, so we are going to check if the ScenarioContext.Current.TestError isn't null, if it is, then using Selenium, take a screenshot (note the below code is a simplified version of what I had at the beginning). [AfterScenario]         public static void TakeScreenShotOnError()         {             if (ScenarioContext.Current.TestError == null) return;             var screenshotDriver = Driver as ITakesScreenshot;             if (screenshotD...

In my post Testing of Automated tests , I mention about a BDD framework which involves using BDD to drive your acceptance tests. BDD stands for Behaviour Driven Development.  One effective method of writing BDD tests are by using a format known as Gherkin language. These consist of Given, When, Thens. The main advantage of the gherkin language is that it's readable by the business, and in an ideal world forms part of the Conditions of Acceptance around a PBI. Also, using a Visual Studio plugin of SpecFlow , you can integrate your Gherkinised COAs into your solution with feature files, and then drive the automated tests, however, for this post I will focus solely on how to effectively gherkinise your acceptance tests. A Feature file consists of a feature outline, which details what the feature file is testing followed by Scenarios and examples (parameters).  The BDD scenarios are made up of a Given, When, Then... These are effectively an initial state (Given), an action (W...