Setup & Teardown

Managing database seeds, cleanups, and dynamic pre-conditions is critical for reliable integration tests. Gherkio provides native setup and teardown lifecycle blocks to isolate environment mutations.

🔁 Lifecycle Execution Path

Gherkio follows a strict execution guarantee for test scenarios:

                  ┌────────────────────┐
                  │   Start Scenario   │
                  └─────────┬──────────┘
                            │
                            ▼
                  ┌────────────────────┐
                  │ Execute SETUP Steps│
                  └─────────┬──────────┘
                            │
              ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
              │                           │
      Success │                   Failure │
              ▼                           ▼
    ┌──────────────────┐        ┌──────────────────┐
    │   Execute Main   │        │    Skip Main     │
    │      STEPS       │        │      STEPS       │
    └─────────┬────────┘        └─────────┬────────┘
              │                           │
              └─────────────┬─────────────┘
                            │
                            ▼
                  ┌────────────────────┐
                  │  Execute TEARDOWN  │
                  │ Steps (Guaranteed) │
                  └─────────┬──────────┘
                            │
                            ▼
                  ┌────────────────────┐
                  │    End Scenario    │
                  └────────────────────┘

• Setup Failures: If any step in the setup block fails, Gherkio halts execution immediately, skips the primary steps block entirely (marking the scenario as failed), and jumps directly to the teardown block.
• Teardown Guarantees: The teardown block is guaranteed to run regardless of whether the setup block or the primary steps block succeeded or failed. This ensures database cleanups, session invalidations, or resource releases are always performed.

📝 Lifecycle Configuration Example

Here is a typical scenario writing a temporary resource, asserting against it, and then cleaning it up:

scenario: Manage User Profile
setup:
  - use: shared/authenticate.yaml   # Get auth token
  - request:
      method: POST
      url: /profiles
      headers:
        Authorization: "Bearer ${token}"
      body:
        username: "temp_user"
    save:
      profileId: body.id

steps:
  - request:
      method: GET
      url: /profiles/$profileId
      headers:
        Authorization: "Bearer ${token}"
    expect:
      status: 200
      body.username: temp_user

teardown:
  - request:
      method: DELETE
      url: /profiles/$profileId     # Clean up target profile
      headers:
        Authorization: "Bearer ${token}"
    expect:
      status: 200