Expose the optional Background element as a property

[kzu]

This makes it far more discoverable.

Fixes #421

[aslakhellesoy]

This will be obsolete when Gherkin.NET is updated for #416, so i don’t think we should add this now.

Why do you want to expose it?

[kzu]

@aslakhellesoy it just makes the API more discoverable. The Children thing isn't, and doing Of<ScenarioDefinition> and Of<Background> for something that are the two core use cases for the Feature type itself, doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd expect to "dot into" properties to discover what's there, and having a 1..1 mapping between the few concepts Gherkin provides to top-level properties in the object model, would make the API easier to use.

When processing the gherkin file via the object model, you need to aggregate steps from the background to each of the scenarios, so you'd typically iterate scenarios, and prepend the steps from background, so it would make sense to make both first-class properties on Feature.

[aslakhellesoy]

Can you tell us a bit more about what sort of software you're building that needs to use this? I might be able to suggest an alternative way to solve the problem you're trying to solve.

On a different note, with #416 we're switching to protocol buffers to represent the AST as well as pickles. Take a look at messages.proto.

The generated classes will let you write code like this in Java (and, I expect, similarly in C#):

https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/blob/7f826f0a719231066b20b5917c6c783c5ca6de3c/gherkin/java/src/main/java/gherkin/pickles/PickleCompiler.java#L51-L64

[aslakhellesoy]

I think I found it: https://github.com/kzu/Gherkinator

So, when we move to protobuf, you'll have a slightly different AST API, which I hope will give you what you need.

Have you considered using Gherkin's Pickle compiler to process the AST? It takes care of traversal of the AST, inlinging background steps and expanding Scenario Outlines. And the final Pickle model is easier to deal with. It's what Cucumber uses.

[kzu]

If there's no .NET "binding" for it, it's a no-go for my little thingy :(. Didn't find any candidate nugets: https://www.nuget.org/packages?q=Pickle

[lock]

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