To get the most out of automated tests in Thucydides, you need to tell Thucydides which features of your application you are testing in each test. While this step is optional, it is highly recommended.

The current version of Thucydides uses a simple, three-level organization to structure acceptance tests into more manageable chunks. At the highest level, an application is broken into features, which is a high-level functionality or group of related functions. A feature contains a number of stories (corresponding to user stories, use cases, and so on). Each story is validated by a number of examples, or acceptance criteria, which are automated in the form of web tests (sometimes called scenarios). Each test, in turn, is implemented using a number of steps.

Of course this structure and these terms are merely a convenience to allow a higher-level vision of your acceptance tests. However, this sort of three-level abstraction seems to be fairly common.

In the current version of Thucydides, you define this structure within the test code, as (very light-weight) Java classes ^[1]. This makes it easier to refactor and rename user stories and features within the tests, and gives a central point of reference in the test suite illustrating what features are being tested. A simple example is shown here. The Application class is simply a convenient way of placing the features and user stories in the one file. Features are marked with the @Feature annotation. User stories are declared as inner classes nested inside a @Feature class.

public class Application {

    @Feature
    public class ManageCompanies {
        public class AddNewCompany {}
        public class DeleteCompany {}
        public class ListCompanies {}
    }

    @Feature
    public class ManageCategories {
        public class AddNewCategory {}
        public class ListCategories {}
        public class DeleteCategory {}
    }

    @Feature
    public class ManageTags {
        public class DisplayTagCloud {}
    }

    @Feature
    public class ManageJobs {}

    @Feature
    public class BrowseJobs {
        public class UserLookForJobs {}
        public class UserBrowsesJobTabs {}
    }
}