I have a feature file with 3 scenarios, and i want to know if Specflow has the following implementation: can I set the environment at a feature level? I want to specify the environment at the beginning of the test, so that the scenarios run on the environment specified at the top.
Feature: SpecFlowFeature
In order to avoid silly mistakes
As a math idiot
I want to be told the sum of two numbers on DEV environment <= Can I do this? Can DEV be a parameter?
#mytag
Scenario: Add two numbers
Given I have entered 50 into the calculator
And I have entered 70 into the calculator
When I press add
Then the result should be 120 on the screen
If i can't do this, can you please provide a solution for my situation? Thank you in advanced.
My advise would be, use the BeforeFeature hook. This way, you can define your environment there per feature you run.
You can check documentation here. It will solve your problem.
https://github.com/techtalk/SpecFlow/wiki/Hooks
Related
So the question is pretty simple - does adding environmental variables affect application speed? In particular, I want to add DYLD_PRINT_STATISTICS variable to a release commit, but I'm afraid it might affect app start speed. Any links or info on the topic would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
As usual the answer is "it depends". In principle adding an environment variable to the environment of an app does not affect speed in a noticeable way.
However if you decide to set a specific variable there is a high probability that you want your application to interpret the contents of the variable in a specific way. This influence is entirely defined by the application and there is very little you can say "in general".
In your case DYLD_PRINT_STATISTICS seems to only print "launch statistics", whatever that may be. Given it can be found on an Apple Webpage describing iOS Debugging Magic it does not appear to be wise to put it into a shipping build. The statistics would be "printed" (i.e. probably logged to some remote location) on your customer device. This may be useful during development where it might get printed to Xcode, but not on customer devices where you will never see the results.
If this should be a "magic" measure to make an application "run" in some better way I do not consider it a good solution and you should dig deeper to find the actual problem.
I'm developing an application in rails with cucumber.
The application includes a workflow that have multiple steps.
Some steps are
A user import files (3 different files),
Other user make make some checks to date that was imported,
Other user input some parameter,
Other user apply the parameter to the data that was imported,
etc.
The steps must be executed in the correct order, and I is necessary to run all the previous steps in order to execute each one, for example to apply the parameter its necessary to have the data imported and the parameters defined.
My problem is how to build cucumber scenarios/features in this situation.
I know that a scenario is not suppose to call all the previous scenario.But the only other idea that I have is to create a very long scenario performing all this steps, and that make sense because it will be a scenario with more than 2 hundred steps.
Any thought on a pragmatical way of implementing cucumber in this kind of situation?
Many Tks
It sounds as if you have to perform every thing every time.
Will every usage of your system include importing three files? Are there any cases where the user may only need to import two files? If the case is that there will always be three files imported, then you might abstract that step as
given the files are imported
Things that always have to be done may be combined into some generic setup. As the setup never changes, the details may not be necessary to mention explicit.
My experience though, is that at the beginning it is hard to separate scenarios and try to do too much in a few scenarios with many steps. If you don't see any other way, start there. Look at your scenario and see if they possible to separate into perhaps two independent scenarios. It may be possible to separate it into two scenarios that are independent. Next step would be to see if these two new scenarios are possible to divide into two smaller, independent scenarios. It happens that it is possible.
It is obviously always possible that Cucumber is not the tool you need. It is possible that you would be better off with a unit test framework.
Is it possible to trigger Jenkins builds on nodes with an unknown label value based on a build's parameter?
I've got a job for building that allows our devs to do just about any kind of build they want, including specified hardware to build against. The problem is that this list of HW is always changing, and I'm trying to stamp out tech debt. I would like it to be where the only necessity is a hardware-specific node having a label the devs know about, and them using a string parameter to match that node label to build against that hardware. They may have labels like, Gen1, Gen2, ProtoXYZ, who knows, you know? It evolves, constantly.
I've seen a few similar questions, but for this one, there isn't a solution, and for this one, I'm not actually sure what's going on here. I've yet to touch Groovy, and I'm trying to do as much as I can with plugins and existing Jenkins functionality.
That doesn't mean I won't do Groovy scripts -- it's just more that I'd like to not obfuscate the process with custom scripts.
Edit:
I'm still testing it, but it looks like this one-liner Groovy script with the plugin, "Groovy Label Assignment" seems to work, but I will check back within the hour:
binding.getVariables().get("HARDWARE");
Where HARDWARE is a parameter that is set by a job parameter. The one thing I'm left to check is whether I can mix and match known and unknown labels with this functionality, e.g., a small drop-down box with known choices, but one choice essentially being "Other, please enter".
Edit: I've been so frazzled that I googled my own previously answered question, answered by myself no less xD I've changed the title to match something more search-engine friendly. Original title was,
Is it possible to trigger Jenkins builds on nodes with an unknown
label value based on a build parameter?
Okay, so this is cool. Yes, this is possible. I did use a Groovy script, but it was a one-liner working in conjunction with a plugin, so not much overheard to keep track of, which I considered acceptable.
First thing's first, using the plugin's site's instructions, I tried this out:
binding.getVariables().get("HARDWARE");
HARDWARE is a job parameter. It's actually a drop-down box, e.g., a Choice Parameter, from that plugin. To invoke this plugin, there's a box to check after installing it called,
Groovy script to restrict where this project can be run
It works like in conjunction with one of my parameters:
Choice1
Choice2
Choice3
${CUSTOM_CHOICE}
In the job, I set ${CUSTOM_CHOICE}'s parameter before I set HARDWARE. This allows HARDWARE to inherit the value of ${CUSTOM_CHOICE} if it exists. It's not idiot-proof, but it gives my devs the flexability to use some well-known choices, or go crazy and experiment. I've verified that this functionality works.
I'm looking for an alternative to FileMaker Pro. I've been playing with a trial for a week now.
I'm looking for a rapid application development platform for small relational databases to run on iOS and OS X
Things I like about FM
Can make reasonable looking layouts quite quickly.
Can access the database from an iPad with Filemaker Go.
Things I don't like about FM
EVERYTHING takes a half a dozen clicks. In particular constructing a script with mouse clicks is painful.
The number of modal dialog boxes is astounding. It is routine to have them layered 3 deep.
Syntax is verbose. Set Variable [ $name Value:value ] Some of the examples start to look like excel formulas. (Excel is a write only language....) Or COBOL.
Near as I can figure variable scope is either local or global. If a script calls a script, you must call it with any local variables you want it to have access to.
Debugging is very difficult in the FM Pro version.
Doesn't seem to be any provision for building a library of functions in a single file.
No clear and obvious guide to how to document your database so that it can be maintained.
No clear and obvious way to print out all your scripts.
No clear and obvious way to print out a calling tree/dependency tree.
No clear guide to best practices.
The short answer is: Despite it's shortcomings (and I'll admit it has many), FileMaker is still the best rapid-development platform for OS X and iOS (and Windows, for that matter). The closest second-place (for OS X/iOS) I can think of would be Cocoa/Cocoa Touch with Core Data with Ruby on Rails for a web interface a distant third.
Having said that, I can offer a few tips for some of your complaints:
If you're a keyboard-centric person like myself, turn on Full Keyboard Access (in the Keyboard System Preference within the Shortcuts tab). This will allow you to tab through all of the controls, such as buttons, which makes it much easier to select deep dialog options from the keyboard. For example, when building a script, you can use the tab key to focus on the list of script steps, then type a few letters of the step you want, which will highlight it, and press return, which will add it to the script. Then, while a script step in the script is highlighted, you can use Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down to move the step up and down in the execution order.
Script variables, both local and global, can be set within any calculation. For example, if you're capturing a primary key value to a local variable and you already have an If script step, you can do the capture within the If script step.
If[ Let( [ $record_id = Table::ID ]; not IsEmpty( $record_id ) ) ]
Similarly, if you have a number of Set Variable script steps in a row, you can combine them into one:
Set Variable[ $? Value:Let( [ $var1 = 1; $var2 = "two" ] ) "" ]
This sets the $? variable to an empty string, but has the side effect of also setting $var1 and $var2.
You're correct that variables are either local to a script (or calculation) or global to the file. If you want to share information between scripts, parameters are the solution. For my personal solution for sending multiple parameters to a script, read my article on Multiple FileMaker Script Parameters.
If you're going to do any amount of custom development with FileMaker, you really want to get FileMaker Pro Advanced, which, inaddition to a step-level debugger, offers the ability to create custom menus and, my personal favorite, custom functions. Using custom functions (which can easily be brought from one file to another), you can built a complex library of functions.
To print out all of your scripts, open Manage Scripts, select all of the scripts with Cmd-A and click the print button on the bottom right of the window.
For script dependencies, look into BaseElements, a FileMaker-based solution for documenting FileMaker systems.
While there's no standard "best practices" across the board, and because of how FileMaker organizes its objects, documentation is often found in various places (script comments, calculation comments, field comments), there are many ways to build a system in FileMaker so that you increase its maintainability. Unlike Objective-C or PHP, where you can be fairly certain where the comment for something will be (either in the declaration or at its first use), FileMaker is more flexible. The important idea behind "best practices" and documentation, in my opinion, is consistency. If you comment a field by using the field comments, always comment fields that way, don't comment calculation fields within the calculation or use dummy validation to put comments in a calculation there.
If you're looking for one guide (but not the only guide) for best practices, check out FileMaker Coding Standards. I use some of those guidelines, and others are my own that have evolved over time.
Finally, if you're looking for generally great material on how to get the most from FileMaker, check out FileMaker Magazine, published by one of the people involved with the FileMaker Coding Standards site.
The truth is, if you're coming from some more conventional development platform, FileMaker is going to take a bit of getting used to. I've been using it for over 20 years, so I'll admit it's probably difficult for me to completely empathize with that situation. But if you give it a bit of a chance, I think you'll find that there's no other platform available that can build complex database systems for OS X and iOS so quickly.
Filemaker takes a lot of getting used to, it's very different to SQL or any of the mainstream taught languages so if you have done some training you will need to re-think how to get to the same end goal.
If you are serious about it then get Filemaker Pro Advanced v14 and that should fix some of your GUI editing issues and join developer.filemaker.com and do the training course that you can download from there.
Once doing that and getting some experience you will find Filemaker is very RAD. Also there IS a way to get around any shortcomings, everything is possible in Filemaker.
As for passing multiple parameters to a script a quick and easy way to do it for 99.5% of cases is to do this:
Calling the script - In the parameters box separate your parameters with a carraige return like so: "parameter 1" & "¶" & "parameter 2" & "¶" & "parameter 3" etc.
In your receiving script use GetValue(get(scriptparameter),1) for parameter 1, 2 for 2, etc.
This technique won't work when you are trying to pass text with carraige returns but that is the exception.
I want to write tests for my app, though each time I look at rspec.info, I really don't see a definite path to take towards "doing things right" and testing first. I watched the peepcode videos on rspec more than once, yet it doesn't take. I want to take more pride in my work, and I think that testing will help. How can I break through this mental block?
Find tools that will reward you for testing. For example, make it very easy to run all the tests and get a message like
73 tests passed.
Try random testing because you can test against a lot of values quickly and easily.
See if your language provides a test-coverage analysis tool that gives you percentage of statement coverage or percentage of block coverage. It is very rewarding to drive code coverage from 60% up to 90%---and if you are lucky, you will find bugs.
My key advice is to quantify your progress in testing so that you can see the numbers going up. That will make it a lot more motivating. (Gee, I wonder what other numbers that go up can be found on this site...)
I was hating it until I started creating a few testing macros. Like logging in or getting to the homepage. I found it fun to start poking at what my testing framework could really do.
It also helped to have someone else get me started by writing a few. Right away I found obvious improvements which made me want to get in there and start improving things.
"Test things you don't want to break."
It might be helpful to prioritise at first. I know that typing out the full three layers of model, view, and controller specs on top of the cucumber acceptance tests can be a chore. So one idea is to just test the most critical things in your app, and add tests as you run into bugs you don't want to see again.
"Always start with a failing test."
Cucumber features plain text "stories" that are pretty awesome for getting some really concrete tests up & running. Maybe that would be one place where you could get started. Cucumber doesn't really work with an AJAX-based app though, for that you'd have to take Selenium or Watir instead. You can start with a failing story before writing a single line of code, and quickly proceed from there to make that story pass.
"Don't test, specify."
Instead of thinking of tests, try to make a mental switch: you're not testing but SPECIFYING how your application will behave. This is design work, not nearly as boring as testing. :)
Think of it like this: if you don't test, your code is broken.
You need to see the value that testing will bring in refactoring and extending your code. Once you have a set of tests that define the behavior of your classes, you can then feel free to start making changes to improve the code. Your tests will provide the confidence that what you're doing isn't breaking the system. When you go to add new functionality to your code, running your existing tests will give you confidence that the new code you've added doesn't break anything else.
The key is to take that long term view. Testing is an investment. It takes a little bit away from the code you could be writing but eventually it will start paying off with interest. The capital that you have stored up will make it much easier to move ahead more quickly when adding new features.
Assuming you already have a list of bugs to fix, I always like to go back through and where ever possible create an automated test that demonstrates the bug. Then fix the bug and watch the test pass. Since you have to test the bug anyway, and the bug should already give you enough information to recreate it, you can see an immediate return on your tests.
Eventually, you'll start to get a feel for putting the tests together and how to write them, and you won't need the "blueprint" of an existing bug.
I wrote a motivation post about just this case couple of days ago. Here is the summary:
Start writing tests whenever you have
an opportunity to do it (ie. whenever
you write some code). Choose any tool
that makes sense to you and write any
test that you feel could cover at
least some tiny behavior of your
application (don’t care about the
coverage or any other scary terms from
the day one). Don’t be afraid about
primitive tests and trivial assertions
- you’ll get more confidence as your test coverage will grow and you’ll
become more and more happier as you’ll
notice that you don’t need to hit F5
that often anymore. Think about
testing in other positive terms - the
better you are at it, the less time
you need to spend with activities you
don’t like (watching the spinning
refresh icon in the browser,
debugging) and more with things you
love.
And here is the whole thing, if you are interested.
As has been mentioned previously, the easiest way to break into testing is with regression testing.
I'd also avoid doing controller specs - they are a PITA. Do heavy model testing, because that's where the logic should be in the first place.
Try spec'ing / testing a plain ruby project before you go off into a rails project.
Well I'll tell you how!
FIRST DO THE FOLLOWING 10 TIMES MANUALLY ON DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS ,BEFORE YOU TRY TO AUTOMATE
the negative scenarios, where the result would come out negative.
it could be wrong data entered and gives you right outputs.
for example a login screen:
There could be many scenarios when correct User wrong PW,Wrong User correct PW.... the most important thing is YOU DONT GIVE UP UNLESS BREAK IT .this is your mantra.
HMMM NOW YOU ARE THINKING LIKE A TESTER NOW TURN TO UR SYSTEM,
JUS WRITE THE NEGATIVES TESTS AND THEIR RESULTS
AND THEM THE POSITVE TESTS
DESIGN IT.
NOW DEVELOP THE FRAMEWORK