Writing Tests

BDD with Cucumber

Tests are defined as Gherkin scenarios in .feature files under cypress/e2e/features/. Step definitions connect Gherkin steps to Cypress commands.

Example Feature File

Feature: Employee login

  Scenario: Successful login with valid credentials
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter valid employee credentials
    And I click the login button
    Then I should be redirected to the employee dashboard

Step Definitions

Step definitions live alongside the feature files or in cypress/support/step_definitions/. Each step maps to a function:

import { Given, When, Then } from '@badeball/cypress-cucumber-preprocessor'
import LoginPage from '../../pages/Login/login'

const login = new LoginPage()

Given('I am on the login page', () => {
  login.visit()
})

When('I enter valid employee credentials', () => {
  login.enterCredentials(
    Cypress.env('EMPLOYEE_EMAIL'),
    Cypress.env('EMPLOYEE_PASSWORD')
  )
})

Fixtures

Test data lives in cypress/fixtures/. Use cy.fixture('filename') to load it.

cy.fixture('application_form').then((data) => {
  // use data in test
})

File Uploads

Use cypress-file-upload:

cy.get('[data-cy=upload-input]').attachFile('test-document.pdf')

Best Practices

• Use data-cy attributes as selectors — never class names or text (they change)
• One scenario = one user flow, not one assertion
• Keep step definitions thin — delegate to page objects
• Use cy.intercept() to assert API calls were made with correct payloads