About

A table (test table) is the basic statement of Fitnesse in order to defined test.

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Format

The format is table dependent but they generally take the basic form of:

• a constructor row (that defines the test class and the constructor argument)
• a mapping row that define the data type (input or output) and maps the data to the method to be called
• data rows that have some input, parameter cells which are followed by some Output cells.

This example from the getting started, a slim decision table:

|eg.Division                    | <-- The test class (Fixture)
|numerator|denominator|quotient?| <-- The method called (without ?, this is setter function, with a ?, the function returns value)
|10       |2          |5.0      | <-- The first row of data to set and to expect
|12.6     |3          |4.2      | <-- The second row of data to set and to expect
|22       |7          |~=3.14   |
|9        |3          |<5       |
|11       |2          |4<_<6    |
|100      |4          |33       |

where:

• The vertical bars delimit table cells (tables are written by separating cells with the pipe symbol)
• If you change “eg.Division” to any other name, you may need to add exclamation mark ! before. It is optional, and tells FitNesse not to apply any smart formatting to table contents (ie to avoid confusing FitNesse with WikiWords)
• The fixture is the Java (or some other supported language) class that the engine will call to process the contents of the table.
• eg.Division is the class to test where :
  • eg specifies a Java package (or other language namespace),
  • and Division specifies the actual class to be called.
• the rows are processed from left to right,
• the input values are headers without a question mark ?
• the input values are passed to the corresponding fields using setter functions
• the expected value are the header with a question mark (ie quotient?) and can be expressed with operators:
  • ~=3.14 - approximately equal
  • <5 - less than
  • 4<_<6 - between

After running the test:

• In the green cells, we got back the expected values from our code.
• A cell turns red when we get back a different value than what we expected. We also see two values: the expected value and the actual value.
• A yellow cell, if an exception was thrown

List

• slim tables
• fit tables

Documentation / Reference

• http://fitnesse.org/FitNesse.UserGuide.WritingAcceptanceTests.SliM#The%20Slim%20Tables