The Cucumber Book

Background

A background section in a feature file allows you to specify a set of steps that are common to every scenario in the file. Instead of having to repeat those steps over and over for each scenario, you move them up into a Background element. There are a couple of advantages to doing this:

• If you ever need to change those steps, you have to change them in only one place.

• The importance of those steps fades into the background so that when you’re reading each individual scenario, you can focus on what is unique and important about that scenario.

To show you what we mean, let’s take an existing scenario that uses only the basic Gherkin Scenario element and improve its readability by refactoring it to use a Background. Here’s our feature ...