I'm using this project as quick start in my workshops. It allows you to get comfortable with gherkin and webdriver. When you're looking for something you can use in production this boilerplate might not be the best choise.

Boilerplate project to run WebdriverIO tests with Cucumber. It is based on a framework called yadda and brings true BDD to JavaScript and WebdriverIO. Instead of writing complicated test code that only devs can understand, Cucumber maps an ordinary language to code and allows to start with the test process in the early stages of your product development.

Choose one of the following options:

1. Download the latest stable release here or
2. Clone the git repo — git clone https://github.com/lazytesting/cucumber-boilerplate.git

Then just embed the test directory into the root folder of your project and copy/install the necessary dependencies from the package.json file and you are all set.

• Super simple setup
• Full integration with WebdriverIO
• Over 150 predefined steps that cover almost everything you need, you can start writing tests right away
• Easy integration with cloud services like Sauce Labs
• Support for different languages (French, Spanish, Norwegian, Polish, German, Russian)
• Integration of WebdriverIO's Multiremote functionality (coming soon)
• Easy to run tests in parallel (coming soon)

Tests are written in Gherkin syntax that means that you write down what's supposed to happen in a real language. All test files are located in ./test/features/* and have the file ending .feature. You will already find some test files in that directory. They should demonstrate, how tests could look like. Just create a new file and write your first test.

myFirstTest.feature

Feature:
    In order to keep my product stable
    As a developer or product manager
    I want to make sure that everything works as expected

Scenario: Check title of website after search
    Given I open the url "http://google.com"
    When I set "WebdriverIO" to the inputfield "#gbqfq"
    And I press "Enter"
    Then I expect that the title is "WebdriverIO - Google Search"

Scenario: Another test
    Given ...

This test opens the browser and navigates them to google.com to check if the title contains the search query after doing a search. As you can see, it is pretty simple and understandable for everyone.

[start the selenium & local webserver]

$ npm run-script start-selenium   # Run in it's own terminal window, and keep it running
$ npm run-script start-server     # Run in it's own terminal window, and keep it running

To run your tests just call the run.js file:

$ ./test/run.js

To configure your tests, checkout the config.js file in your test directory. It comes with a bunch of documented options you can choose from.

You can setup multiple configs for specific environments. Let's say you want to have a different baseUrl for your local and pre-deploy tests. Use the config.js to set all general configs (like mochaOpts) that don't change. They act as default values. For each different environment you can create a new config with the following name scheme:

config.<ENVIRONMENT>.js

Now you can create a specific config for your pre-deploy tests:

config.staging.js

module.config = {
    baseUrl: 'http://staging.example.com'
}

Your environment-specific config file will get merged into the default config file and overwrites the values you set. To run a test in a specific environment just set the desired NODE_ENV environment variable:

$ NODE_ENV=staging ./test/run.js

The predefined snippets allow you to do a lot of common things but you might need extra snippets which are better aligned with your aims. To do so you will find all step definitions in ./test/steps. They are separated in given, when and then. For instance if you want to have a login step that helps you to login the browser before each test, you can start to add that as a given snippet:

./test/steps/given.js

module.exports = function() {

    this.given(/I open the (url|site) "$string"$/, function (type, page, done) {
        var url = type === 'url' ? page : this.baseUrl + page;
        this.browser.url(url , done);
    })

    // ... other predefined snippets
    // ...
    // ...

    /**
     * my login snippet
     */
    .given(/^I login as "$string" with password "$string"$/, function(username, password, done) {
        this.browser
            .setInput('input#username', username)
            .setInput('input#password', password)
            .submitForm('#login')
            .call(done);
    })

You define your snippet using regular expressions. This is pretty powerful as it allows you to create complex sentences with multiple options. Everything that's within "$string" gets captured and appended to the callback. The last argument is always a callback function that you need to call when your step is done. You can access the browser and your WebdriverIO instance with this.browser.

To assert values this boilerplate project comes with a Chai integration. Let's say you want to check if the username gets display in the header properly. For that we add a new snippet in

./test/steps/then.js

module.exports = function(dict) {

    this.then(/^I expect that the title is( not)* "$string"$/,
            require('../support/helper/checkTitle'))

    // ... other predefined snippets
    // ...
    // ...

    /**
     * my check username in header snippet
     */
    .then(/^the username "$string" should be present in the header$/, function(username, done) {
        client.getText('#header .username', function(err, headerUsername) {
            should.not.exist(err);
            username.should.equal(headerUsername, 'username in header doesn\'t match');
        })
        .call(done);
    })

That's it. We created two new snippets to test something on our page. We can use these snippets now in our Scenario like this:

Feature: ...

Scenario: check if username is present
    Given I login as "roboter" with password "test123"
    Then the username "roboter" should be present in the header

You can add additional descriptive comments in your feature files.

###
  This is a
  block comment
###
Feature: As a bystander
    I can watch bottles falling from a wall
    So that I can be mildly amused

# This is a single line comment
Scenario: check if username is present
    Given I login as "roboter" with password "test123"
    Then the username "roboter" should be present in the header

If you have failing or unimplemented tests you can mark them as "Pending" so they will get skipped.

// skip whole feature file
@Pending
Feature: ...

// only skip a single scenario
@Pending
Scenario: ...

If you want to run just a single test and ignore the others you can use the @Only annotation.

// run test is isolation
@Only
Scenario: ...

If there are more tests to isolate use the @Isolate annotation.

// run only the "isolated" scenarios
@Isolate
Scenario: ...

Scenario: ...
...

@Isolate
Scenario: ...