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Watcher : And record should (not) appear in topic

The watcher steps don't compare record content, they simply verify that at least one record (optionally matching a key) does or does not appear on a topic within the read timeout window.

Record should appear, positive assertion​

And record should appear in topic
  | topicAlias | topicType | consumerReadTimeout | consumerDeltaTime |
  | orders-out | raw       | 15                  | 60                |

Fails if no record appears within consumerReadTimeout seconds.

Record should not appear, negative assertion​

And record should not appear in topic
  | topicAlias | topicType | consumerReadTimeout | consumerDeltaTime |
  | orders-out | raw       | 10                  | 30                |

Passes only if no record appears within consumerReadTimeout seconds. Use this to assert that a message is filtered out or not produced by your pipeline.

Column reference​

ColumnTypeRequiredDescription
topicAliasstring✅Alias of a declared output topic
topicTypestring✅raw or avro — determines deserialiser
consumerReadTimeoutinteger❌Max seconds to wait (or confirm absence)
consumerDeltaTimeinteger❌How far back (seconds) to seek
Choosing the right timeout for negative assertions

For should not appear, set consumerReadTimeout to a value that is long enough to be confident nothing will arrive, but short enough to not slow your suite down unnecessarily. 5–10 seconds is usually a good starting point.

Example : filtering scenario​

Scenario: Invalid orders are filtered out
  When record from file is sent
    | topicName | file              | recordKey   |
    | orders-in | order-invalid.json | order-invalid |
  And record should not appear in topic
    | topicAlias | topicType | consumerReadTimeout |
    | orders-out | raw       | 10                  |