Tables in your Gherkin Scenarios

When writing gherkin, we describe the expected behavior in business terms.  Sometimes, this is text; other times, mixing small tables or lists helps to describe the behavior better.  In the following feature file, there are examples of three types of gherkin tables:

Each of these tables has different implementation steps. Each is simple to use, but it is easy to use the wrong method by mistake (this happened to me)

Simple List of Items

In the first example, Check for pets, there is a simple list of items.  In the Ruby/Cucumber implementation, you use the ‘raw’ method to handle the list of items.  Use raw when you do not have a column header.

Table with Headers

In the second scenario, Check for valuables, there is a table of items with a header. In this example, use the hashes method. Hashes returns an array of hashes.  With this collection of hashes, you can then retrieve your values normally.

List of Items with Side Header

In the final scenario, Check denominations of money in safe, there is an example of named list of items with the column on the left side. With this type of table, you use the rows_hash method.  This returns your data as a hash. In this example, you can see label (which is a Ruby symbol) follows the format of :dollar_bills_[denomination].  This is because Ruby symbols cannot begin with numbers. This impacts the readability a little but not too much.

Scenario outlines with examples are a way to data drive scenarios using tables.  I didn’t include an example of them.  They are generally well understood and there are more examples of them than there are of the other tables.