Bad practices when writing your BDD scenarios

I usually write about the best practices to follow when writing your BDD scenarios. This time I will do different and write some examples that I found of how to not write your BDD scenarios.

 Example 1 – Too many steps :

  Scenario: Valid data entered
    Given a user exists
    When I visit the details access page
    And I fill in email with "test@email.com"
    And I select "read only" from "Permissions"
    And I fill in "Valid until" with "2010-03-01"
    And I press "Grant access"
    Then I should see "Access granted till 2010-03-01."
    And I should be on the details page

 Example 2  – UI elements dependency:

   Scenario: Adding a picture 
     Given I go to the Home page 
     When I click the Add picture button 
     And I click on the drop down "Gallery"
     And I click on the first image
     Then I should see the image added on the home page

 Example 3 – Excessive use of tables :

   Scenario: Adding a new data user 
     Given I am on  user details page
     When I select an existent user
     And I send some new user data
     |name |age|country|language|address |telephone|
     |James|20 |england|english |street 1|123456789|
     |Chris|30 |spain  |spanish |street 2|987654321|
     Then I should see the correct previous registered data
     |gender  |married|smoke|
     |male    |true   |true |
     |male    |false  |false|

 Example 4  – Code and data structure:

   Scenario: Include attachment
     Given I go to the Attachments page 
     When I click the Add attachment button with css "#attachment-button"
     And I click on the first csv file with class ".file .csv"
     Then I should see the file attached with the id ".attachment"

• Write declarative scenarios.
• Write at a higher level of abstraction, instead of being concerned with clicking widgets on a page. Surfacing UI concerns on a feature can make it fragile to ordinary design changes.
• Try to stick to having not more than 5 steps per scenario. It’s easier to read.
• Avoid code or data structure like xpath selectors, css class, regex in your scenario.