Behat provides Gherkin Syntax which is a human-readable format. It allows you to easily describe your user stories.
To start with Behat you should install it with Composer and then initialize your test files:
$ composer require --dev behat/behat="^3.0.5"
$ ./vendor/bin/behat --init
+d features # place your *.feature files here
+d features/bootstrap # place your context classes here
+f features/bootstrap/FeatureContext.php # place your definitions, transformations and hooks here
By default you place your test files in the features/
folder and have the extension .feature
.
Each test file should define a particular feature of the application. A feature is broken down into a bunch of scenarios and contain a series of steps that need to be performed successfully for the scenario to pass. Each scenario needs to pass for a feature to pass.
# features/PartyHarmony.feature
Feature: Party Harmony
As a Dungeon Master, I want to ensure harmony and mutual trust, so that
the party can work together as a team
Scenario: Teach members to respect each others property
Given that the Wizard has 10 cookies
And the Bard eats 1 cookie
Then the Bard is mysteriously on fire
To run your tests, you execute the Behat binary directly. We can optionally specify which feature file to run (otherwise all tests are run). This feature file will fail with undefined steps errors (because we haven't defined what those steps mean):
$ ./vendor/bin/behat features/PartyHarmony.feature
Feature: Party Harmony
As a Dungeon Master, I want to ensure harmony and mutual trust, so that
the party can work together as a team
Scenario: Teach members to respect each others property # features/PartyHarmony.feature:6
Given that the Wizard has 10 cookies
And the Bard eats 1 cookie
Then the Bard is mysteriously on fire
1 scenario (1 undefined)
3 steps (3 undefined)
0m0.01s (10.49Mb)
--- FeatureContext has missing steps. Define them with these snippets:
/**
* @Given that the Wizard has :arg1 cookies
*/
public function thatTheWizardHasCookies($arg1)
{
throw new PendingException();
}
/**
* @Given the Bard eats :arg1 cookie
*/
public function theBardEatsCookie($arg1)
{
throw new PendingException();
}
/**
* @Then the Bard is mysteriously on fire
*/
public function theBardIsMysteriouslyOnFire()
{
throw new PendingException();
}
Each step in a scenario runs a piece of code from a context PHP file (different feature tests can load different contexts). We can copy the examples suggested by Behat or create our own ones. The step are matched to a regular expression check. So if we implement
<?php
#
class FeatureContext {
/**
* @Given that the wizard has :num cookies
*/
public function wizardHasCookies($num) {
// $this->wizard is a pre-existing condition.... like syphilis
$this->wizard->setNumberOfCookies($num);
}
/**
* @Given the Bard eats :num cookie
*/
public function theBardEatsCookie($num)
{
$this->bard->consumeCookies($num);
}
/**
* @Then the Bard is mysteriously on fire
*/
public function theBardIsMysteriouslyOnFire() {
PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertTrue(
$this->bard->isBardOnFire()
);
}
}
You'll notice the use of PHPUnit_Framework_Assert
. Behat doesn't have it's own assert system so you can use whichever one you want.
Now running the tests will execute actual code and we can test if everything passes:
$ ./vendor/bin/behat features/PartyHarmony.feature
Feature: Party Harmony
As a Dungeon Master, I want to ensure harmony and mutual trust, so that
the party can work together as a team
Scenario: Teach members to respect each others property # features/PartyHarmony.feature:6
Given that the Wizard has 10 cookies # FeatureContext::thatTheWizardHasCookies()
And the Bard eats 1 cookie # FeatureContext::theBardEatsCookie()
Then the Bard is mysteriously on fire # FeatureContext::theBardIsMysteriouslyOnFire()
1 scenario (1 passed)
3 steps (3 passed)
0m0.01s (10.59Mb)