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POWhat is the best strategy for BDD testing which relies on data
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  1. POWhat is the best strategy for BDD testing which relies on data
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    copied!<p>What are some strategies for writing BDD tests, which can test behaviour that relies on certain data being in the system?</p> <p>For example, say I was working with the following scenario:</p> <pre><code>Feature: Search for friend In order to find a friend As a user I want to search my list of friends And filter by 'first name' </code></pre> <p>How could this test ever succeed unless/until some "dummy" friends had been entered into the system?</p> <p>More to the point, what "dummy" criteria would the test utilize?</p> <hr> <p>Should I hard-code the name of a friend, assuming it to already exist in the database?</p> <p><strong>But</strong> what if I move my code to a new environment with a fresh database?</p> <hr> <p>Or, should I write code to manually insert dummy data into the system prior to executing each test?</p> <p><strong>But</strong> this would be modifying the internal state of the application from within a test framework, which seems like a bad approach, since we're supposed to be treating the program as a black-box, and only dealing with it through an interface.</p> <hr> <p>Or, would I create other scenarios/tests, in which the data is created using an interface of the program? </p> <p>For example, 'Feature: Add a new friend to my list'. Then I could run that test, to add a user called 'Lucy', then run the 'Search for friend' tests to search for 'Lucy', which would now exist in the database.</p> <p><strong>But</strong>, then I'd be introducing dependencies between my scenarios, which contradicts the common advice that tests should be independently runnable.</p> <hr> <p>Which one the best strategy? Or is there a better way?</p>
 

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