Blog: DelphiSpec

Behavior Driven Development in Delphi

In this Skill Sprint I introduce behavior driven development principles, tell a few words about Gherkin language and demonstrate how this can be applied to Delphi programming.

August 12, 2014
6AM San Francisco / 9AM New York / 2PM London / 3PM Milan
11AM San Francisco / 2PM New York / 7PM London / 8PM Milan
5PM San Francisco / Wed & Fri 9AM Tokyo / Wed & Fri 10AM Sydney

Click here to register now for Skill Sprints.

Slides and links from this Skill Sprint:

DelphiSpec

• https://github.com/RomanYankovsky/DelphiSpec

Samples

• https://github.com/RomanYankovsky/DelphiSpec/tree/master/Demo

Gherkin

• https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin

Blog Posts

• http://roman.yankovsky.me/?p=1299
• http://roman.yankovsky.me/?p=1458
• http://roman.yankovsky.me/?p=1648

DelphiSpec grows

Even though I didn’t have much time lately, I managed to do some significant progress with DelphiSpec library over the last couple of weeks. Some features were introduced in my previous post, now please let me introduce new features.

First of all, there is a new quite cosmetic, but very convenient and nice feature – now it is possible to declare step definitions without the use of attributes (special thanks to Stefan Glienke).

In the previous post I showed you this syntax:

    // sample scenario: "Given user ROOT exists"    
    [Given_('user (.*) exists')]
    procedure MyProcName(const Name: string);

Though this still works, now it’s possible to do the same without attributes at all:

 
    // sample scenario: "Given user ROOT exists"
    procedure Given_user_name_exists(const Name: string);

Thus you can use method name to declare step type and pattern. It is less flexible, but sometimes it is more convenient.

Also not only the string type is supported. This will work fine:

 
    // sample scenario: "Given I have 3 apples"
    procedure Given_I_have_N_apples(N: Integer);

You are even allowed to pass an array:

 
    // sample scenario: "Given I have a list 1,2,3,4"
    procedure Given_I_have_a_list_Ns(Ns: TArray<Integer>);

Or even array of records:

 
type   
  TUserInfo = record
    Name: string;
    Password: string;
    Id: Integer;
  end;

  // sample scenario
  // Given users exist:
  //  | id | name  | password |
  //  | 1  | Roman | pass1    |  
  //  | 2  | Other | pass2    |
  procedure Given_users_exist(Table: TArray<TUserInfo>);

Last example demonstrates a cool Gherkin data type – data table. Please note that this table is passed to a step definition method as a dynamic array of typed records. All type casting stuff is done by DelphiSpec and you don’t have to think about it… It is RTTI magic :)

One more type that Gherkin has and DelphiSpec supports is python-like multi-line strings. This kind of string is enclosed by three quotes and is passed to a step definition method as a regular Delphi string:

 Given I have a blacklist:
   """
   m@mail.com
   123@mail.com
   """

Besides there are a couple more interesting features.

Background allows you to add some context to all scenarios in a single feature. A Background is like an untitled scenario, containing a number of steps. The difference is when it is run: the background is run before each of your scenarios.

Feature: Accounts

Background:
  Given users exist:
    | id | name  | password |
    | 1  | Roman | pass1    |  
    | 2  | Other | pass2    |

Scenario: Correct Login
  Given my name is "Roman"
    And my password is "pass1"
  When I login
  Then I have access to private messages

Scenario: Incorrect Login
  Given my name is "Roman"
    And my password is "pass2"
  When I login
  Then access denied

Also now you can not only describe a single scenario, but a more general Scenario outline:

Scenario Outline: Add two numbers
  Given I have entered <num1> in calculator
    And I have entered <num2> in calculator
  When I press Add
  Then the result should be <sum> on the screen
  
  Examples:
    | num1 | num2 | sum |
    |  1   |  2   |  3  | 
    |  4   |  5   |  9  |
    |  3   |  1   |  4  |

The Scenario outline steps provide a template which never run directly. A Scenario Outline is run once for each row in the Examples section beneath it. The Scenario Outline uses placeholders, which are contained within angle brackets in the Scenario Outline’s steps

This is how a Scenario outline is showed in DUnit test tree:

“Add two numbers” has a single test for each case.

Full demo code is available on github. A plan for the future is to implement bindings to DUnitX and support both DUnit and DUnitX.

DelphiSpec Library Announce

Martin Fowler:

That said, I do think that the greatest potential benefit of DSLs comes when business people participate directly in the writing of the DSL code. The sweet spot, however is in making DSLs business-readable rather than business-writeable. If business people are able to look at the DSL code and understand it, then we can build a deep and rich communication channel between software development and the underlying domain.

In this post I’d like to announce DelphiSpec library. It was inspired by Cucumber. Actually, this library is the implementation of Gherkin language in Delphi. This implementation is not complete (consider it as an alpha version). Some features haven’t been implemented yet, but this project is still in development.

In a few words, the essence of the project is that DelphiSpec allows to turn the scenario into the appropriate unit test for DUnit:

Feature: Calculator

Scenario: Add two numbers
  Given I have entered 50 in calculator
    And I have entered 70 in calculator
  When I press Add
  Then the result should be 120 on the screen

Scenario: Add two numbers (fails)
  Given I have entered 50 in calculator
    And I have entered 50 in calculator
  When I press Add
  Then the result should be 120 on the screen

Scenario: Multiply three numbers
  Given I have entered 5 in calculator
    And I have entered 5 in calculator
    And I have entered 4 in calculator
  WHEN I press mul
  Then the result should be 100 on the screen

I’ll underline that these are not tests but scenarios. In other words, this is the Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) in addition to the famous Test-Driven Development (TDD). Such scenarios serve as documentation, automated tests and development-aid – all rolled into one format. You should not describe internal system logic using scenarios: they should describe how user sees an application behavior.

Use of Gherkin is a good choice for DelphiSpec because it’s now considered as de-facto standard in the particular niche and if you took interest in it you can even buy a book with the best practices, tips on writing scenarios and examples in this language. Also there is lots of information on the Internet.

Let’s return to the example (the Calculator). The scenarios execution result in DUnit will look like:

How does this work? Gherkin is very small itself. Actually its only aim is to describe Given-When-Then formula. There are several keywords, all the rest could be customized.

We test a very simple class: a calculator. I will not post its code here, you can find it on github. The interesting thing is: how will the program understand and execute commands like “Given I have entered 50 in calculator”? Here comes the helper class which describes these steps (so-called “step definitions”). This is the helper class itself:

unit SampleCalculatorStepDefs;
 
interface
 
uses
  SampleCalculator, DelphiSpec.Attributes, DelphiSpec.StepDefinitions;
 
type
  [_Feature('calculator')]
  TSampleCalculatorSteps = class(TStepDefinitions)
  private
    FCalc: TCalculator;
  public
    procedure SetUp; override;
    procedure TearDown; override;
 
    [_Given('I have entered (.*) in calculator')]
    procedure EnterInt(Value: string);
 
    [_When('I press Add')]
    procedure AddInt;
 
    [_When('I press Mul')]
    procedure MulInt;
 
    [_Then('the result should be (.*) on the screen')]
    procedure TestResult(Value: string);
  end;
 
implementation
 
uses
  System.SysUtils, TestFramework, DelphiSpec.Core;
 
{ TSampleCalculatorSteps }
 
procedure TSampleCalculatorSteps.AddInt;
begin
  FCalc.Add;
end;
 
procedure TSampleCalculatorSteps.EnterInt(Value: string);
begin
  FCalc.Push(Value.ToInteger);
end;
 
procedure TSampleCalculatorSteps.MulInt;
begin
  FCalc.Mul;
end;
 
procedure TSampleCalculatorSteps.SetUp;
begin
  FCalc := TCalculator.Create;
end;
 
procedure TSampleCalculatorSteps.TearDown;
begin
  FCalc.Free;
end;
 
procedure TSampleCalculatorSteps.TestResult(Value: string);
begin
  if FCalc.Value <> Value.ToInteger then
    raise ETestFailure.Create('Incorrect result on calculator screen');
end;
 
initialization
  RegisterStepDefinitionsClass(TSampleCalculatorSteps);
 
end.

In fact, every step has a type (Given/When/Then) and the regular expression that describes the rest part of the step. Regular expressions help to extract the parameters which will be passed to the class methods to perform the relevant part of the scenario.

The only thing we need to do so that this system works is to add into project file (.dpr) the procedure call which receives the path to a folder which contains “.feature” files to process.

begin
  PrepareDelphiSpecs(TPath.Combine(ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName), 'features'), True, 'EN');
  DUnitTestRunner.RunRegisteredTests;
end.

The last parameter (“EN”) allows us to specify a language in which we write the script. This is another interesting Gherkin possibility. Since, generally, there is no difference in what language the text is processed using regular expressions; it would be a good idea to translate a few keywords into different languages (using this XML).

So nothing prevents us from writting scenarios in any language:

Функционал: Калькулятор

Сценарий: Сложить два числа
  Допустим я ввожу 50 на калькуляторе
         И я ввожу 70 на калькуляторе
  Когда я нажимаю СЛОЖИТЬ
  Тогда результат на экране должен быть 120

These are the very first steps, but I’m planning to implement full Gherkin functionality.

P.S. There are some comments in G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RomanYankovsky/posts/2S789T49dX8