How to use behat.yml

Use behat.yml to define your Suites and Contexts.

Directory & files within features

the directory structure of a QANoErr project is contained under the main root directory features. These are the directories within features:

directories

  • bootstrap: This contains the ProjectContext.php
    • pages: This is where your QANoErr Chrome Extension generated POM should exist
  • cbt: Files that support testing on CrossBrowserTesting
  • coverage: If you have a PHP project and you run the coverage task
  • gherkin: Location of Gherkin templates consisting of:
    • hbs.features: The handlebar templates
    • snippet.features: The snippet features referenced by the hbs features
    • partial.features: The 'partial' features referenced by the hbs features
  • results: when running CrossBrowserTesting, the reports are generated here
  • temp The composer command composer behat-prep processes the files in the gherkin directory and generates features in the temp. The behat.yml references the suites in the temp.

Review of the main behat.yml

Here's an example behat.yml for review:

default:
  suites:
    home:
      paths: ["%paths.base%/features/temp/home.feature"]
      contexts: [ProjectContext]
    admin:
      paths: ["%paths.base%/features/temp/admin.feature"]
      contexts: [ProjectContext]
  extensions:
    Behat\MinkExtension:
      browser_name: 'chrome'
      javascript_session: selenium2
      selenium2:
        wd_host: http://0.0.0.0:4444/wd/hub
      base_url: https://twlwdev.wpengine.com

    SensioLabs\Behat\PageObjectExtension:
      namespaces:
        page: [pages]
        element: [pages]

We define each of our Suites separately as shown above. This is because you can run a particular Suite by using this command line:

vendor/bin/behat --config behat.yml --suite home and that will run the home suite. If you run only vendor/bin/behat --config behat.yml then all the defined suites will run.

Each Suite has two values:

  • paths: where is the feature and what is it's name
  • contexts: which Context is used. Typically all our Suites use the same Context, which in this case is ProjectContext.

The Behat\MinkExtension provides an API that is browser independent. In the case here, we are specifically using the browser_name chrome. Other accepted values are firefox and safari.

When running locally, we need to supply the wd_host. This is the address of the running composer selenium-server command.

The base_url is the address of the base page. As we move our code from local dev, to dev to staging to prod, we can change this base_url and run our tests w/o any other change.

The SensioLabs\Behat\PageObjectExtension extension needs to know what the namespaces are, which is always pages.

How to use behat.yml

There are a number of ways to run behat.

  • composer: composer behat which will run composer behat-prep and then run behat
  • command line - all suites: vendor/bin/behat --config behat.yml
  • command line - specif suite: vendor/bin/behat --config behat.yml --suite suitename

Use w/ psysh

If you are interested in doing some debugging, you must run behat from the command line as shown above. If you use the composer approach, behat will not pause when encountering a eval(\Psy\sh()); statement. If you run from the command line, behat will pause when encountering the eval(\Psy\sh());

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