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Cuke Salad

Cucumber, washed and ready to eat for Friction-free ATDD/BDD

This is a work in progress - feedback welcome e-mail feedback to

You can see our current list of intended features here:

Build Status Code Climate

This project has step-free access!


With CukeSalad you don't need to write step-definitions.

Of course, you still have to write some code - but only the code that expresses:

  • the roles and the actions they can perform
  • the tasks and the actions involved in completing that task





Let's see how this works with a simple example...


gem install cukesalad

Let's Get started

Create a new project called Calculator:

cukesalad Calculator

Or, if you have an existing cucumber project that you want to configure to use cukesalad, you can type:


Write Features

In features/, let's create our first feature file - a_place_to_start.feature:

Feature: A Place To Start
As Callie, a calculating individual
I want to know when my calculator is on
So that I know when I can start calculating

Scenario: Let's Begin
  Given I am a Calculating Individual
  When  I attempt to switch on the calculator
  Then  I should see the answer '0'

Let's take a moment to understand this scenario:

Scenario: Let's Begin
  Given I am a <some role>
  When  I attempt to <do some task>
  Then  I should <ask some question> '<expected answer>'

To get this working, we don't need to write any steps. Instead, we describe tasks...

Create Tasks

Explaining how to do a task is easy: Create a new file, features/lib/tasks/switch_on_the_calculator.rb

Remember the step When I attempt to switch on the calculator

in_order_to "switch on the calculator" do

Remember the step Then I should see the answer '0' Now we need task/see_the_answer.rb

in_order_to "see the answer" do

Now we've explained the tasks, we need to define the role that performs them. In this example, we need to explain how the CalculatingIndividual role works...

Create Roles

Remember the step Given I am a Calculating Individual?

We explain a role by creating a new file called features/lib/roles/calculating_individual.rb

module CalculatingIndividual

  def switch_on_the_calculator
    @calculator =

  def look_at_the_display

You'll need a class called Calculator on the load path of course, but that's it.

From your project folder, run (note: '%' is our command prompt)

% cucumber

We now have our first passing Feature, without creating a single step definition!

Wash, rinse, repeat

Let's try another scenario...

Scenario Outline: Find the sum of two numbers
  Given I am a Calculating Individual
  And I was able to switch on the calculator
  When I attempt to add: the number '10' and the number '10'
  Then I should see the answer '20'

Notice that we've reused 'switch on the calculator'.

The new When step has a slightly different layout. Let's examine that for a second... See below. Notice the ':' (colon) after <do something> followed by the name-value pairs:

When I attempt to <do something>: <name> '<value>' <name> '<value>'

You can also use a ',' (comma) in situations where a colon wouldn't quite work:

When I attempt to <do something>, <name> '<value>' <name> '<value>'

<do something> can be as many words as you like. You can have as many name-value pairs as you like.

For this to work we need a task called tasks/add.rb that explains the individual actions required to complete the task:

in_order_to "add" do
  enter @value_of(:the_number)
  press :plus
  enter @value_of(:and_the_number)
  press :equals

Notice how the value_of lines use symbols that correspond to the wording 'the number '10' to the number '10' in the "When" step.

There is some 'syntactic sugar' that we can use to dress this up a little and make it read nicer... a simple attribute mapping (using Ruby 1.9.x syntax):

in_order_to "add", the_number: :first_number, to_the_number: :second_number do
    enter the :first_number
    press :plus
    enter the :second_number
    press :equals

All we've done is mapped :the_number to :first_number and :to_the_number to :second_number. There is a special method called "the" that allows you to reference the mapped values rather than the symbols derived from the scenario.

Now all we need to do is create the corresponding methods in calculating_individual.rb.

module CalculatingIndividual

  def switch_on_the_calculator
    @calculator =
    @operate_with = {
      plus: :+,
     minus: :-

  def enter value
    @calculator.enter value.to_i

  def press next_operator
    if next_operator == :equals
      @calculator.get_ready_to @operate_with[next_operator]

  def equals

  def look_at_the_display

Of course you'll have to implement the calculator too

Now, you can run cucumber again:

% cucumber

There's no need to write step_definitions... Simply express the roles and the tasks in clear, concise, easy to read classes.

If we want to know what things we can say, instead of trawling through a step-def ruby file, we can look in our tasks folder:

├── add.rb
├── calculate.rb
├── calculations.rb
├── see_the_answer.rb
├── subtract.rb
└── switch_on_the_calculator.rb

You can structure your tasks as you see fit. For example, as the project grows, it might end up looking like this:

├── all_purpose
|   └── calculate.rb
├── arithmetic
|   ├── add.rb
|   ├── divide.rb
|   ├── multiply.rb
|   └── subtract.rb
├── extras
|   ├── recall_from_memory.rb
|   ├── store_in_memory.rb
|   └── switch_on_the_calculator.rb
├── questions
|   ├── see_the_answer.rb
|   ├── see_the_following_indicators.rb
|   └── switch_on_the_calculator.rb
├── trigonometry
|   ├── sine.rb
|   ├── cosine.rb
|   └── tangent.rb
└── reference_material
    └── calculations.rb

Alternative Roles

As our features describe the value of a calculator application and not its implementation, we have the opportunity to reuse them.

In the Calculator example, we create a new role in ./features/lib/alternative/roles/calculating_web_user.rb, which we can swap into our tests using a Cucumber profile defined in features/cucumber.yml:

default --exclude features/lib/alternative/
alternative -r features/lib/alternative/ -r features/support/env.rb -r features/lib/default/tasks/

We can run our alternative configuration like so:

%cucumber --profile alternative

The Calculating Web User masquerades as the Calculating Individual from our previous example, and provides the same API, allowing us to reuse all of our existing features and tasks.

The alternative, ./lib/web_calculator.rb, implementation is a simple Sinatra application, which we drive with the Capybara web testing framework.

By writing a single new role class we're able to reuse all of our existing features, tasks and even the Calculator itself, which the web calculator delegates to in order to do its calculations.

After adding some more scenarios and tasks and an alternative "Calculating Individual" (see below for why), our Calculator directory structure currently looks like this...

├── cucumber.yml
├── features
│   ├── A_PlaceToStart.feature
│   ├── Addition.feature
│   ├── Complex_calculations.feature
│   ├── Subtraction.feature
│   ├── Typical_workflow.feature
│   ├── lib
│   │   ├── alternative
│   │   │   ├── roles
│   │   │   │   └── calculating_web_user.rb
│   │   │   └── tasks
│   │   └── default
│   │       ├── roles
│   │       │   └── calculating_individual.rb
│   │       └── tasks
│   │           ├── add.rb
│   │           ├── perform.rb
│   │           ├── see_the_answer.rb
│   │           ├── subtract.rb
│   │           └── switch_on_the_calculator.rb
│   └── support
│       └── env.rb
├── lib
│   ├── calculator.rb
│   └── web_calculator.rb
└── spec
    ├── calculator_spec.rb
    └── web_calculator_spec.rb

Take a look around the examples and the code to see how it all works. We hope you enjoy reading as much as we enjoyed writing it.

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