Empty Givens?

[alexvoss]

Hi,

I have a few things that need to be tested when my app starts and I am not entirely sure how to do this. Am I right to assume that a scenario needs to have at least one each of Given, Whenand Then? What would I do for Given if the Whenstep starts the app and there is nothing to do prior? One thing I thought of was to write Given nothing special and have a step definition for this that does nothing. Am I holding the wrong end of the stick?

Cheers,

Alex

[Tyler-Keith-Thompson]

I think your best bet here is to keep Gherkin as useful as possible

Given some context that does not need to execute
When I run the app
Then some testable outcome is achieved

And then have Swift code that matches your Given and simply contains no instructions:

Given("^some context that does not need to execute$") { _, _ in }

Personally, I would add all these steps to a different swift file of some kind so that they don't muddy up code. Examples of how I've gone about that can seen in #23

HOWEVER, a scenario does not need to have the keyword Given in it. You could start a scenario with When or Then because Gherkin has line-based parsing. It has some hierarchy, but not a whole lot. So if your phrasing in Gherkin adequately describes a scenario without a Given step, that's totally fine.