How do I use dynamic arguments in my SpecFlow scenario background? - specflow

Question

I have a feature that logs into a trading system and keys a number of trades. Theres a lot of reusable steps at the beginning of each trade (initial trade set up) But each trade has different arguments.
Here is an example
Scenario: Trade 1
Given I have selected my test data: "20003"
And I have connected to VMS with the following details:
| Field | Value |
| Username | user |
| Password | password |
| Session | myServer |
When I run the DCL command to set my privileges to full
Then I expect to see the following:
| Pass Criteria | Timeout |
| Privileges Set | 00:00:30 |
When I ICE to the test account: "System Test"
Then I expect to be ICED see the following:
| Pass Criteria | Timeout |
| "ICED to System Test" | "00:00:10" |
When I run a dcl to delete the company: "Test_Company"
Then I expect to see a confirmation that company: "Test_Company" has been deleted or doesnt exist
So within those steps the 2 things that could change is the "Given" argument so the test data ID and also the Test company at the end.
What I wanted was some way to run a background step so that its being able to know what parameters to enter. So if it was Trade 1 for example it would enter 20003, if it was Trade 2 enter 20004 etc.
Can I do this? I was thinking using the "Example" table that Scenario Outline uses. Or is there a better way to do this? I dont want these repeatable steps in all of my scenarios as it takes up lots of room and doesnt look too readable.

Answer 1

So I did some searching and couldn't find a solution that didn't require a lot of coding so I made this up:
this is what the background looks like
Background:
Given I have selected my test data:
| Scenario | ID |
| DirectCredit_GBP | 20003 |
| Cheque_GBP | 20004 |
| ForeignCheque_GBP | 20005 |
And in order to find which row it should use the method behind it uses ScenarioContext. Here is the method:
[Given(#"I have selected my test data:")]
[When(#"I have selected my test data:")]
public static void setTestDataID(Table data)
{
string scenario = ScenarioContext.Current.ScenarioInfo.Title;
string testDataId = data.ReadTable("Scenario", scenario, "ID"));
TestDriver.LoadTestData(testDataId);
}
What the method does is search the table for the scenario name (using an extension method I wrote) and get the ID, once its got the ID it passes it into my TestDriver method.
It seems to work fine and keeps the test readable.