specflow with online documentation

Question

I'd like to introduce some "executable specifications" approaches in my company (.NET). I'd like to keep running with SpecFlow because I am really convinced Gherkin is a great tool. I'd like the test engine to be able to post this living documentation on a wiki, to keep it visible to business people and other stakeholders. A good option should be to be able to add some comments to the scenarios, to keep it as user-friendly as possible.

How would you manage this ? I have heard about Fitnesse or StoryTeller but it seems they do not handle Gherkin. Am I wrong ?

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at Pickles. Pickles is a living documentation generator that will convert your .feature files into html pages (or a Word or Excel document). You can host those html pages on an internal webserver.

I am not sure what you mean by "add some comments".

• If you mean "add some comments to the living documentation": you can of course edit the html files but those changes will be lost when you regenerate the living documentation. Those changes will not be sent to the .feature files either.
• If you mean "add some comments so that the readers of the documentation have more information than just the given/when/then steps": Gherkin allows you to write a description at the start of a feature file and at the start of each scenario. Gherkin also allows you to write technical comments by preceding lines with a #. Pickles will always render the descriptions (markdown supported!) and optionally render the technical comments.

Full disclosure: I am the maintainer of Pickles. If you need help getting started with Pickles, feel free to ask!