Execution report as Gherkin

The execution report SpecBinder writes holds everything about a run — every scenario, every step, its arguments, its status, its timings — but it holds it as JSON. Everything you need is in there, but none of it is quick to read. The Execution Report pane renders that same file back as Gherkin, so the report reads the way the spec does.

The editor-mode switch in the top-right of a spec file's tab offers three layouts. Editor is the spec file alone. Split puts the report beside the spec file that produced it. The third button hides the editor and gives the report the full width of the tab — useful when you are reading a run rather than comparing it with the current version of the spec file.

<A spec file in Split mode: the spec on the left, the Execution Report pane on the right, showing the same feature as it ran.>

The report is rebuilt from the run, not from the file

The report pane sits beside the editor, but it is not a second view of your file. Every line in it comes from the record of the run, so it shows what ran, not what the spec file says now. Edit the spec after a run and the report keeps the older wording, until you run again.

That is what makes the two panes worth putting side by side: you are reading the run against the spec, rather than reading the spec twice.

<Split mode after an edit: a step reworded in the spec on the left, with the report on the right still showing that step as it read when it ran.>

Two things are laid out differently there, because they appear as the run saw them.

Background steps appear at the top of each scenario that used them, in the order they ran, rather than once under a Background: heading.

<A spec file with a Background: beside the report, where each scenario in the report begins with those background steps repeated in the order they ran.>

Scenario Outlines appear once per row that ran, each with that row's values filled in — including inside doc strings and tables — so you can see what each example was actually given.

<A Scenario Outline: with a three-row Examples table beside the report, which shows three separate scenarios with the placeholders replaced by each row's values.>

Linked highlighting

Switch on the linked highlighting from the report pane's toolbar. Wherever you put the caret, the matching line in the other pane is framed, and a connector is drawn between the two across the divider — in either direction, from spec file to report or back.

<Split view with the caret on a step in the spec file and its counterpart framed in the report pane, with the connector drawn across the divider.>

It copes with the cases where one line does not simply match one line: a frame covers a heading along with its description, or a step along with its doc string or table, and a background step links to each of its repetitions in the report, as an outline's step does to each row it ran as.

The highlight colour is yours to pick from the button's dropdown, and it persists between sessions.

<screenshot snippet showing where to set this colour in the toolbar.>

The panes also scroll together, which is on by default. Scroll one and the other keeps pace with it.

Inline panels follow the layout

The panels the plugin opens under a step — the error panel on a failed step, a doc string preview, published reporter entries, a Playwright trace — open in whichever panes are on screen: both of them in Split, the report pane alone in Execution Report mode, the editor alone in Editor mode.

<Split mode with an error panel open under the same failed step in both panes, one below the step in the spec file and one below its counterpart in the report.>