Gherkin has its own set of keywords, and each keyword has some meaning. To learn how to write steps in the Gherkin language, you must be familiar with its keyword.
If you are using any editor, these keywords are highlighted with some color. Each keyword is translated into many spoken languages; we’ll use English in this article.
Categories of Gherkin Keywords
We can divide Gherkin Keywords into two categories:
- Primary Keywords: Feature, Rule, Scenario, Example, Given, When, Then, And, But, Background, Scenario Outline, Examples
- Secondary Keyword: Doc String("""), Data Tables(I), @(Tags), #(Comment)
Each step starts with Given, When, Then, And, or But.
List of Gherkin Primary Keywords and their synonyms
You can replace each Keyword with its Synonyms in your Gherkin File.
| Keyword | Synonyms | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Feature | Business Need, Ability | Feature provides a high level description of a software feature. It is used to group related scenarios. |
| Background | Runs steps before Scenario | |
| Scenario | Example | Starts a new scenario |
| Scenario Outline | Scenario Template | Starts a new scenario with multiple examples |
| Given | *, And, But | Puts the system in a predefined state or specify your pre conditions in it |
| When | *, And, But | Use when, to describe an event or action |
| Then | *, And, But | Use Then, to describe an expected outcome or result |
| Examples | Scenarios | List examples for Scenario Outline |
| Rule | Represent one business rule that should be implemented. It grouped together several scenarios that belongs to same rule. |
Note: And is used for statements that are an addition to the previous steps and represent positive statements. But are used for statements that are an addition to the previous step and represent negative statements.
This is an overview of Gherkin Keywords; we will discuss each keyword in detail with examples while working on our BDD tools like Cucumber, Behat, etc.