Do you know Cucumber is a great tool used to run acceptance tests using the plain-text functional descriptions with Gherkin? Behavior Driven Development strategy or BDD, as it is popularly known, is implemented using the Cucumber tool. The best part about using the Cucumber BDD framework are: Tests are first documented before being implemented. Tests are easy to understand for a user who doesn’t even know the functionality. It efficiently combines the automated tests having a living documentation and specifications that can be executed. Can’t wait to get started with Cucumber? To help you out, we will be diving into some of the best Cucumber practices that will enable you to write better scenarios using the Gherkin language. You will also get a clearer picture of the Behavior Driven Development concepts with these practices. Basics Of Cucumber BDD Framework Before we jump dive into Cucumber best practices, there are a few things you need to understand about the Cucumber BDD framework. To work with Cucumber, you would need three types of files as described below: Feature File – It servers as an entry point to the Cucumber tests. It is the file where your test scenarios are written in Gherkin language. A Feature file may contain single or multiple test scenarios. The Feature file is used as a live document and ends with .feature extension. Step Definition – It contains the piece of code, in your chosen programming language, with some annotations attached to it. On seeing a Gherkin Step, Cucumber executes the code which is contained within the Step. The annotation has a pattern that links the Step Definition to the matching steps defined in the Feature File. Others – We may need other files to execute tests at different levels. For example, we are testing the Web UI; then, we will be using a tool like Selenium, which might use a framework of its own like the Page Object Model. Since in this post, our primary focus is Cucumber best practices, let us leave the other files’ detailing for some other time. In the next section of this blog, we will understand feature files in detail and how we can use them efficiently. These are some of the essential practices you should implement for successfully using Cucumber & Selenium. As already stated, we will use Gherkin to write the scenarios in the Cucumber BDD framework. Let us now understand in detail some Cucumber best practices.