Cucumber a command-line tool has scenario inside the Feature file which contains a list of steps for the Cucumber to work through. Cucumber follow some basic rules or syntax called Gherkin to understand these feature files.

Since each scenario contains some step, so there should be a step definition with each step which map the business-readable language of each step into Ruby code to perform the desired action. Let's suppose, we have a feature file:

Feature: Verify the Signin Functionality through Global Header

 @TC006 @sanity @signin @medium @positive @regression

 Scenario Outline: Signin through Global Header

    Given I am at Home Page

    And I clicked on SignIn link

    And I enter <Username> as username for SignIn

    And I enter <Password> as password for SignIn

    And I clicked Remember me checkbox

    And I clicked on SignIn button

    Then I should see the Activities page

    And This is the end of testcase

    Examples:

     | Username | Password |

     | testing  | testing  |

Every feature file starts with a "Feature" keyword followed with optional tags. Each tag starts with "@" symbol. Tags are basically used to mark any scenario. Let's suppose in our testsuite we have 100 testcases in which 40 are sanity testcases, then we will put "@sanity" tag over the desired testcase(scenario). So, to run only sanity testcases we have to execute the following command from the project folder.

cucumber --tags ~@sanity

Now, only 40/100 sanity testcases will be executed.

Here, "Given", "And" and "Then" are Gherkin keywords. Every teststep must starts with Gherkin keyword only. First, cucumber will search the step definition for "I am at Home Page" in the entire project and execute the desired action. After the execution of first step definition, cucumber will look for the next teststep in the feature file. Now, again search the step definition of second step; this process continues till all the steps in the scenario are executed.