This step registers a named placeholder and its replacement value. Placeholders are substituted throughout the scenario wherever they appear: in endpoint paths, request body strings, and header values. The placeholder name is used verbatim as a literal string match, so the convention of wrapping names in double braces, for example {{userId}}, is recommended to avoid accidental matches.
Placeholders are reset before each scenario, so values defined in one scenario never affect another. This step is particularly useful when a scenario needs to parametrize a URL segment or inject a dynamic token that was hardcoded for the test run. Both the I and we subjects are accepted.
Accepted phrasings
Given I set placeholder "{{name}}" to "value"
Given we set placeholder "{{name}}" to "value"Examples
Given I set placeholder "{{userId}}" to "123"
Given we set placeholder "{{token}}" to "abcd-1234"
Given I set placeholder "{{postId}}" to "42"
Given I set placeholder "{{version}}" to "v2"In a real scenario
Scenario: Fetch a specific user record by ID using a placeholder
Given the API base URL is "https://api.example.org"
And I set placeholder "{{userId}}" to "99"
And I set header "Accept" with value "application/json"
When I send a GET request to "/users/{{userId}}"
Then the API response code should be 200
And the API response should contain "99"