ASP.NET MVC, BDD, Specflow and WatiN: putting the application in a specific state

Question

I'm new to BDD, Specflow and WatiN. I would like to use these tools to automate acceptance tests for my ASP.NET MVC application.

I've already figured out how to basically use these tools, and I successfully built my first acceptance test: Log on to the website.

Here is the Gherkin for this test:

Feature: Log on to the web 
    As a normal user
    I want to log on to the web site

Scenario: Log on
    Given I am not logged in
    And I have entered my name in the username textbox
    And I have entered my password in the password textbox
    When I click on the login button
    Then I should be logged and redirected to home

Now, I would like to write a bunch of other tests, and they all require the user to be authenticated. For example:

Feature: List the products 
    As an authenticated user
    I want to list all the products

Scenario: Get Products
    Given I am authenticated
    And I am on the products page
    When I click the GetProducts button
    Then I should get a list of products

What bugs me is that to make this test independent of the others, I'd have to write code to log on the website again. Is this the way to go? I doubt.

I'm wondering if there are best practices to follow for testing scenarios like that. Should I keep the browser open and have the tests run in a specific order, on the same browser? Or should I put the MVC application in a specific state?

Answer 1

For this, we have a specific Given step, that looks something like this in Gherkin:

Given I am signed in as [email protected]

Like you mentioned, this step basically reuses other steps to sign in the user. We also have an "overload" that takes a password, in case the test user has a non-default test password:

Given I am signed in as [email protected] using password "<Password>"

[Binding]
public class SignInSteps
{
    [Given(@"I am signed in as (.*)")]
    public void SignIn(string email)
    {
        SignInWithSpecialPassword(email, "asdfasdf");
    }

    [Given(@"I am signed in as (.*) using password ""(.*)""")]
    public void SignInWithSpecialPassword(string email, string password)
    {
        var nav = new NavigationSteps();
        var button = new ButtonSteps();
        var text = new TextFieldSteps();
        var link = new LinkSteps();

        nav.GoToPage(SignOutPage.TitleText);
        nav.GoToPage(SignInPage.TitleText);
        nav.SeePage(SignInPage.TitleText);
        text.TypeIntoTextField(email, SignInPage.EmailAddressLabel);
        text.TypeIntoTextField(password, SignInPage.PasswordLabel);
        button.ClickLabeledSubmitButton(SignInPage.SubmitButtonLabel);
        nav.SeePage(MyHomePage.TitleText);
        link.SeeLinkWithText("Sign Out");
    }
}

I think this is the best approach, since you should not be able to guarantee that all of the tests run in a specific order.

You may also be able to do this with a SpecFlow tag though, and have that tag execute BeforeScenario. That might look something like this:

Feature: List the products 
    As an authenticated user
    I want to list all the products

@GivenIAmAuthenticated
Scenario: Get Products
    Given I am on the products page
    When I click the GetProducts button
    Then I should get a list of products

[BeforeScenario("GivenIAmAuthenticated")]
public void AuthenticateUser()
{
    // code to sign on the user using Watin, or by reusing step methods
}

...should I put the MVC application in a specific state?

When signing in users, it's not the MVC application that needs to be put into a specific state, but rather the browser that needs to be put into a specific state -- namely, writing the authentication cookie. I'm not sure if you can do this or not, given that the auth cookie is encrypted. I always found it easier to just let SF walk though the authentication steps at the beginning of each scenario.