Calling Steps from Step Definitions

It is possible to call steps from Step Definitions:

# ruby
Given /^the user (.*) exists$/ do |name|
  # ...
end

Given /^I log in as (.*)$/ do |name|
  # ...
end

Given /^(.*) is logged in$/ do |name|
  Given "the user #{name} exists"
  Given "I log in as #{name}"
end

As of version 0.4.4 you can also do this:

Given /^(.*) is logged in$/ do |name|
  # Look ma, no quotes!
  # Easier to do "extract steps from plain text" refactorings with cut and paste!
  steps %Q{
    Given the user #{name} exists
    Given I log in as #{name}
  }
end

Invoking steps from step definitions is practical if you have several common steps that you want to perform in several scenarios. -Or simply if you want to make your scenarios shorter and more declarative. This allows you to do this in a Scenario:

# feature
Scenario: View last incidents
  Given Linda is logged in # This will in fact invoke 2 step definitions
  When I go to the incident page

Instead of having a lot of repetition:

# feature
Scenario: View last incidents
  Given the user Linda exists
  And I log in as Linda
  When I go to the incident page

Calling steps with multiline step arguments (tables and strings)

Sometimes you want to call a step that has been designed to take Multiline Step Arguments, for example:

# ruby
Given /^an expense report for (.*) with the following posts:$/ do |date, posts_table|
  # The posts_table variable is an instance of Cucumber::Ast::Table
end

This can easily be called from a plain text step like this:

# feature
Given an expense report for Jan 2009 with the following posts:
  | account | description | amount |
  | INT-100 | Taxi        |    114 |
  | CUC-101 | Peeler      |     22 |

But what if you want to call this from a step definition? There are a couple of ways to do this:

# ruby
Given /A simple expense report/ do
  Given "an expense report for Jan 2009 with the following posts:", table(%{
    | account | description | amount |
    | INT-100 | Taxi        |    114 |
    | CUC-101 | Peeler      |     22 |
  })
end

Or, if you prefer a more programmatic approach:

# ruby
Given /A simple expense report/ do
  Given "an expense report for Jan 2009 with the following posts:", table([
    %w{ account description amount },
    %w{ INT-100 Taxi        114    },
    %w{ CUC-101 Peeler      22     }
  ])
end

You can also simply receive a table and pass it down. This Spanish step definition passes its table to the English one:

# ruby
Entonces /^debo ver los links:$/ do |links_table|
  Then "I should see the links:", links_table
end

Then /^I should see the links:$/ do |links_table|
  links_table.hashes.each do |hash|
    Then "I should see the link #{hash['link']}"
  end
end