bdd-lint 0.1.1

A standalone linter for Gherkin feature files to enforce grammar and best practices

bdd-lint

A linter for Behave BDD scenarios to enforce grammar and best practices.

Features

• All major rules from gherkin-lint
• Custom configuration via .bdd-lint.yml
• Enable/disable rules and set options
• Support for custom user-defined rules in custom_rules/
• CLI config selection: bdd-lint <feature-file> [--config <config-file>]

Supported Rules

GivenPastTenseRule: Enforces past tense for 'Given' steps.

• WhenPresentTenseRule: Enforces present tense for 'When' steps.
• ThenFutureTenseRule: Enforces future verbs (should, will, shall) for 'Then' steps.
• OneWhenThenRule: Restricts each scenario to exactly one When and one Then step.
• ThirdPersonRule: Enforces third-person perspective in steps.
• TenseConsistencyRule: Ensures consistent tense usage across Given/When/Then.
• NoEmptyScenariosRule: Flags scenarios with no steps.
• NoUnnamedFeaturesRule: Flags features without a name.
• NoUnnamedScenariosRule: Flags scenarios without a name.
• NoDuplicateScenariosRule: Flags duplicate scenario names.
• NoDuplicateStepRule: Flags duplicate steps within a scenario.
• NoScenarioOutlinesWithoutExamplesRule: Flags scenario outlines missing Examples.
• NoStepKeywordInStepTextRule: Flags steps containing step keywords in their text.
• NoMultilineStepRule: Flags steps that span multiple lines.
• NoTagsOnBackgroundsRule: Flags tags on Background sections.
• ConsistentStepKeywordOrderRule: Ensures step keywords appear in the order: Given, When, Then.
• LowerCaseFeatureNameRule: Enforces feature names to be lower case.
• LowerCaseScenarioNameRule: Enforces scenario names to be lower case.
• MaxScenariosPerFileRule: Flags if the number of scenarios in a file exceeds a threshold.
• MaxStepsPerScenarioRule: Flags if the number of steps in a scenario exceeds a threshold.
• RequiredTagsRule: Flags scenarios missing required tags.
• TagsFormatRule: Flags tags that do not match a required format.

Usage

bdd-lint path/to/feature_file.feature
bdd-lint path/to/feature_file.feature --config custom_config.yml
# Example: output as JSON
bdd-lint path/to/feature_file.feature --json

Testing

Run the unit test suite with pytest:

pytest -q

The project includes a set of unit tests under tests/unit/ that exercise the parser, each rule, the NLP helper heuristics and the configuration verifier.

Configuration

Create a .bdd-lint.yml file in your project root:

rules:
  GivenPastTenseRule: true
  MaxScenariosPerFileRule: true
options:
  MaxScenariosPerFileRule:
    max_scenarios: 5

Custom Rules

Place your custom rule Python files in the custom_rules/ directory. Each file should define a class named in CamelCase matching the filename, inheriting from BaseRule.

Example: custom_rules/my_custom_rule.py

from bdd_lint.rules.base_rule import BaseRule
class MyCustomRule(BaseRule):
    def check(self, scenario):
        # Custom logic
        return []

Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• textblob, spacy, nltk, pytest, pytest-bdd, gherkin-official
• NLTK/TextBlob corpora and spaCy model are auto-downloaded on install

Notes:

• The library ships with a lightweight NLP helper in bdd_lint.utils.nlp which falls back to fast heuristics when TextBlob/spaCy are not available. This keeps tests fast and deterministic.
• Use the bdd_lint.config_verifier.verify_config helper to validate .bdd-lint.yml files programmatically.
• The CLI returns human-readable messages by default or a JSON array of issue objects when --json is used. Each issue is represented by the bdd_lint.models.issue.Issue dataclass and includes rule, message, scenario, line, and severity keys.

License

MIT