svn co http://svn.codehaus.org/jbehave/trunk

No ‘official releases’ yet, but if you want to play, go ahead. Examples of examples are checked into trunk.

Features include:

• plain text scenarios
• steps defined using annotations that match the scenarios
• built on JUnit
• Ensure (which is just an extension of Assert, so you don’t have to use it)
• auto-conversion of string arguments to numbers
• pending steps generated for anything which hasn’t been defined yet (these don’t break the build)
• errors from scenarios are rethrown after the full scenario has been described

Our goal with JBehave 2 was to make a framework that was lightweight, easy to use and didn’t take as long to set up as JBehave 1. To that end, we’ve been driving this entirely from example code – no guessing, unless it’s obvious – and we’ve ended up with something that works quite a lot like RSpec’s story runner, but for Java.

• To use it, simply name your scenario file with underscores, eg: i_can_toggle_a_cell and define steps in it thus:

  Given a 5 by 5 game
  When I toggle the cell at (2, 3)
  Then the grid should look like
  .....
  .....
  .....
  ..X..
  .....
  When I toggle the cell at (2, 4)
  Then the grid should look like
  .....
  .....
  .....
  ..X..
  ..X..
  When I toggle the cell at (2, 3)
  Then the grid should look like
  .....
  .....
  .....
  .....
  ..X..

• Then extend the Scenario class with a similarly named Java class:
  ICanToggleACell.java
• Extend the Steps class – this is where your steps will be defined, and you can have as many as you want
• Inject these into the Scenario:

  public class ICanToggleACell extends Scenario {
  
  	public ICanToggleACell() {
  		super(new GridSteps()); // varargs, can have lots of steps
  	}
  }

• Annotate methods in your step class to match the ones in your plain text scenario.

  public class GridSteps extends Steps {
  
  	private Game game;
  	private StringRenderer renderer;
  
  	@Given("a $width by $height game")
  	public void theGameIsRunning(int width, int height) {
  		game = new Game(width, height);
  		renderer = new StringRenderer();
  		game.setObserver(renderer);
  	}
  
  	@When("I toggle the cell at ($ column, $row)")
  	public void iToggleTheCellAt(int column, int row) {
  		game.toggleCellAt(column, row);
  	}
  
  	@Then("the grid should look like $grid")
  	public void theGridShouldLookLike(String grid) {
  		ensureThat(renderer.asString(), equalTo(grid));
  	}
  
  }

• Run your new scenario!

Future features we’re thinking of:

• having more than one scenario in a file
• tagging scenarios
• better tolerance of whitespace
• an option for pending steps to break the build
• decent documentation to show you how you can customise filename parsing, argument parsing, etc.
• anything you persuade us you need.

Give it a go and tell us what you think! Release 2.0 can’t be far away…