Is it acceptable to write a “Given When Then When Then” test in Gherkin?

Question

Is it acceptable to write a \"Given When Then When Then\" test in Gherkin? A real-life example is as follows all AllPlayers.com

Scenario: Successfully regist         


        

Answer 1

It depends on the target audience of the feature as written. It seems highly likely that the gherkin you've got there was not written with a stakeholder (i.e. somebody not-techie but has a vested interest in the business and the website). BDD is really about the conversation about requirements and expectations - and Gherkin is a tool which gives a standard/recognised way that everyone should be able to read that you can write the requirements and expectations; in a way that serves as automated tests for a developer and perhaps test scripts for a tester.

Trying to take my developer hat off now - I would say that a business stakeholder would rather read, and understand easily...

Scenario: Should be able to successfully register on website
    Given I am new to the website
    And I want to register for a user account
    When I go to the registration form
    And I complete all the required registration details correctly
    Then I will be registered on the website
    And I will be automatically logged in

You can still build the same test behind the scenes of this specification - but this specification has larger readership, it is a more easily understood requirement that anyone should understand. I'm not saying what you have got has no value - far from it. It will be a very valid test. But it is quite developer specific, and highly coupled to the UI implementation (if you refactor/redesign the UI, you now need to refactor your Requirements...).

I started off having plenty of gherkin specifications much like yours - and I still use them on occasion. Once your testing framework has built up a little gherkin is a really great way of kind of writing data-driven/configurable unit tests; and they still have great value to my development process. But I do try to separate the more "pure" specifications from my "developer" ones - but folder and tags/categories.

Edit: I guess in summary what I'm getting at is... what you have is a great "test", but a fairly bad "requirement". Stick with it though!