Given: This puts the system in a known state before the user (or external system) starts interacting with the system (in the When steps). Examples are as follows:

Given I logged in as a system administrator
Given the user has been authorized to do operation
Given I have two items in my shop cart

When: A When step represents the key action the user performs. The action usually has an observable effect somewhere else. Examples are as follows:

When I press "Submit" on the Contact us area
When I am on the "Shopping Cart" page
When the progress bar is running
When I wait for the Ajax request to finish

Then: The Then step observes and validates the outcome(s), it is an assertion sentence just like the assert statement in common unit testing frameworks. The Then sentence should be related to the business value/benefit in your feature description. Examples are as follows:

Then the login popup form should be shown
Then user should be redirected to item list page
Then I should receive $800

And, But: This is used when we have multiple Given/When/Then steps. Examples are as follows:

Given I have a dummy repository on github
And this project is written in Ruby on Rails
Then I should be able to clone this project
And I should be able to add more developers to folk this project
But I cannot make this project private

Environment preparation: Examples include simulating user login, and preparing test data in the database

URL navigation: Examples include opening initial pages and redirecting the user to a predefined URL after a specific action

DOM manipulation: Examples include filling text in a form, selecting items from drop-down lists, clicking on a link, or pressing a button

Waiting: Examples include waiting for a specific operation to be finished, waiting for animations to be completed, and simply waiting for a few seconds

Assertion: Examples include verifying whether a page contains expected content and checking whether the user was redirected to the right page

To find a DOM element:

find_field('blog_title').should be_visible
find_field('blog_content').value.should eq(@content)
find_link('back').click
find("section#main").text.should eq("Foo section")
find("div.main-pillar").find("section#main").text.should eq("Foo section")
all("a").each { |a| puts a[:href] }
all("input[type='text']").each { |textbox| p textbox[:value] }

To fill text in a textbox:

fill_in 'Login', :with => '[email protected]'

To select an item in the drop-down list:

select("California", :from => 'Choose State')

To choose the Male ratio button:

choose 'Male'

To check the Food checkbox:

check 'Food'

To click on the Edit Profile link:

click_link 'Edit Profile'

To click on the Submit button:

Click_button 'Submit'

To attach a file:

attach_file('Image', '/path/to/image.png')

To make assertions:

page.has_selector?('div.main-pillar section#main').should be_true
page.has_selector?(:xpath, '//div/article').should be_true
page.has_xpath?('//div/article').should be_true
page.has_css?('div.main-pillar section#main').should be_true
page.has_content?('Foo section').should be_true

rspec-rails: This is a BDD test framework for Rails. In our Cucumber step implementation, we rely on it to write human-readable test assertions.

Launchy: The Launchy application inside the Rails application is required when we debug our Cucumber steps.

database-cleaner: This introduced a set of strategies to ensure a clean state when running Cucumber tests.