Gherkin Formatting with EditorConfig

EditorConfig is a file format specification for consistent coding styles maintained by EditorConfig.org, usable by adding an .editorconfig file to your solution or project. Check the EditorConfig support documentation of Visual Studio for more details about EditorConfig files.

You can fine-tune the formatting for Gherkin files in your project by tweaking settings in your .editorconfig file. These options control indentation, table styling, and more for *.feature files, and apply the same way in Visual Studio, VS Code, and Rider alike — no per-IDE variant of the .editorconfig keys is needed. They feed the Document & Table Formatting feature.

Supported Settings

Setting Name	Description	Value Type	Default
gherkin_indent_feature_children	Indent child elements of Feature (Background, Rule, Scenario, Scenario Outline)	boolean	false
gherkin_indent_rule_children	Indent child elements of Rule (Background, Scenario, Scenario Outline)	boolean	false
gherkin_indent_steps	Indent steps in scenarios	boolean	true
gherkin_indent_and_steps	Apply additional indentation to And/But steps in scenarios	boolean	false
gherkin_indent_datatable	Indent DataTable arguments within steps	boolean	true
gherkin_indent_docstring	Indent DocString arguments within steps	boolean	true
gherkin_indent_examples	Indent the Examples block in Scenario Outlines	boolean	false
gherkin_indent_examples_table	Indent the Examples table within Examples blocks	boolean	true
gherkin_table_cell_padding_size	Number of spaces to pad table cells on each side	integer	1
gherkin_table_cell_right_align_numeric_content	Right-align numeric values in table cells	boolean	true

Sample .editorconfig for Gherkin Files

Below is an example of an .editorconfig section for *.feature files.

Note

The Gherkin file format supports non-ASCII characters only with UTF-8 format. In order to ensure that the feature files are saved as UTF-8, you can specify the charset setting in the EditorConfig file as shown in the example below.

[*.feature]
charset = utf-8
gherkin_indent_feature_children = true
gherkin_indent_steps = true
gherkin_indent_datatable = true
gherkin_indent_docstring = true
gherkin_indent_examples_table = true
gherkin_table_cell_padding_size = 2
gherkin_table_cell_right_align_numeric_content = true

Adjust the values above to match your project’s formatting needs.