| name | bdd-testing |
| description | Implements Behavior-driven development (BDD) tests using onsi/ginkgo for Go projects. Use when the user wants to add BDD tests, user-focused tests, ginkgo tests, or says "BDD" in the context of testing Go code. |
| metadata | {"tags":"testing, bdd, ginkgo, go, user-focused"} |
BDD Testing
Write Go tests that describe observable, user-facing behavior rather than implementation mechanics. Ginkgo structures specs as readable sentences; Gomega asserts outcomes. The goal is a suite that survives refactoring because it states what the system does, not how it does it.
Process
READ, UNDERSTAND, RESEARCH, REFLECT before writing any spec.
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Understand the users and their goals. Identify who calls this code and what outcomes they care about. Specs are written from that vantage point, not from the internals.
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Discover behaviors, not functions. Walk the subject's public surface and list the behaviors a user would notice: "reports the weight in grams", "rejects an empty title", "retries on transient failure". One behavior → one It.
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Group behaviors into scenarios. Cluster behaviors under Context/When blocks that name the precondition ("when the book has no author"). The nesting should read as a sentence top-down.
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Implement with Ginkgo + Gomega. Use the syntax reference for exact APIs:
./references/ginkgo-syntax.md. Start from the
template: ./assets/spec-template.go.
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Run via go test. Specs are standard Go test files — go test ./... works with no extra tooling. The ginkgo CLI adds richer output and parallelism.
Rules
- Black-box package (
package <pkg>_test) — assert against the public API the way a real caller would. Don't reach into unexported state.
- One bootstrap file per package (
<pkg>_suite_test.go) with RegisterFailHandler(Fail) + RunSpecs. One spec file per subject, named after it.
- Fresh subject per spec — construct in
BeforeEach, never share a pointer across It blocks. Shared mutable state is the #1 cause of order-dependent failures.
- Assert behavior, not implementation.
It("returns the author's last name"), never It("checks the field").
- No committed focus.
FIt/FDescribe silently skip the rest of the suite. Run ginkgo unfocus (or grep for ^F) before committing.
- Async without sleeps. Use
Eventually(...).Should(...) instead of time.Sleep + Expect.
When to use tables
When many inputs share one behavior shape, prefer DescribeTable + Entry over copy-pasted It blocks — see the syntax reference's "Table-driven specs" section. Each Entry is its own spec, so failures point at the exact case.
Execution
READ, UNDERSTAND, RESEARCH, REFLECT.
Break this down into multiple actionable steps. Think about them again.
Execute and Verify them one step at the time.
Repeat until done. Keep going until everything works and you think you did a great job!
