This extension offers an incredibly simple (and fast) way to begin testing and driving your Laravel applications with Behat. Some benefits include:
.env
one) for different app environments is a little tricky in Laravel 5. This extension handles that for you automatically. By default, it'll look for a .env.behat
file in your project root.FeatureContext
file.To get started, you only need to follow a few steps:
Prefer a video walk-through? See this lesson from Laracasts.
As always, we need to pull in some dependencies through Composer.
composer require behat/behat behat/mink behat/mink-extension laracasts/behat-laravel-extension --dev
This will give us access to Behat, Mink, and, of course, the Laravel extension.
Next, within your project root, create a behat.yml
file, and add:
default:
extensions:
Laracasts\Behat:
# env_path: .env.behat
Behat\MinkExtension:
default_session: laravel
laravel: ~
Here, is where we reference the Laravel extension, and tell Behat to use it as our default session. You may pass an optional parameter, env_path
(currently commented out above) to specify the name of the environment file that should be referenced from your tests. By default, it'll look for a .env.behat
file.
This file should, like the standard .env
file in your project root, contain any special environment variables
for your tests (such as a special acceptance test-specific database).
Run, from the root of your app
vendor/bin/behat --init
It should set
features/bootstrap/FeatureContext.php
At this point you should set it to extend MinkContext.
<?php
use Behat\Behat\Hook\Scope\AfterStepScope;
use Behat\Behat\Tester\Exception\PendingException;
use Behat\Behat\Context\Context;
use Behat\Behat\Context\SnippetAcceptingContext;
use Behat\Gherkin\Node\PyStringNode;
use Behat\Gherkin\Node\TableNode;
#This will be needed if you require "behat/mink-selenium2-driver"
#use Behat\Mink\Driver\Selenium2Driver;
use Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext;
/**
* Defines application features from the specific context.
*/
class FeatureContext extends MinkContext implements Context, SnippetAcceptingContext
{
You're all set to go! Start writing some features. If you want a quick dummy example to get you started, refer to this project.
Note: if you want to leverage some of the Mink helpers in your
FeatureContext
file, then be sure to extendBehat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext
.
As a convenience, this package also includes a number of traits to streamline common tasks, such as migrating your database, or using database transactions, or even testing mail.
Often, you'll find yourself in situations where you want to migrate your test database before a scenario. Easy! Just pull in the Laracasts\Behat\Context\Migrator
trait into your FeatureContext
, like so:
// ...
use Laracasts\Behat\Context\Migrator;
class FeatureContext extends MinkContext implements Context, SnippetAcceptingContext
{
use Migrator;
}
That's it! The trait will do the rest. Before each scenario runs, if your database needs to be migrated, it will be!
On the other hand, you might prefer to run all of your tests through database transactions. You'll get a nice speed boost out of the deal, as your data will never actually be saved to the database. To take advantage of this, once again, pull in the Laracasts\Behat\Context\DatabaseTransactions
trait, like so:
// ...
use Laracasts\Behat\Context\DatabaseTransactions;
class FeatureContext extends MinkContext implements Context, SnippetAcceptingContext
{
use DatabaseTransactions;
}
Once you pull in this trait, before each scenario runs, it'll begin a new transaction. And when the scenario completes, we'll roll it back for you.
Especially when functional testing, it can be beneficial to test your mail against a real test server (rather than mocking it out, and hoping that things were formatted correctly). If you're a fan of MailTrap (highly recommended), this extension can help you!
If you haven't already, create a quick account (free) and inbox at MailTrap.io. Next, update either your config/mail.php
to use the settings that MailTrap provides you, or modify your .env.behat
variables to reference them. Once you've configured your app to use MailTrap, the only other thing we need is your MailTrap API key, and the default inbox id that we should use. Makes these available in config/services.php
. Here's an example:
'mailtrap' => [
'secret' => 'YOUR API KEY',
'default_inbox' => 'ID OF THE MAILTRAP INBOX YOU CREATED'
]
That should do it! Now, just pull in the trait, and you're ready to go! Let me show you:
<?php
// ...
use Laracasts\Behat\Context\Services\MailTrap;
use PHPUnit_Framework_Assert as PHPUnit;
class DmcaContext extends MinkContext implements SnippetAcceptingContext
{
use MailTrap;
/**
* @Then an email should be sent to YouTube
*/
public function anEmailShouldBeSentToYoutube()
{
$lastEmail = $this->fetchInbox()[0];
$stub = file_get_contents(__DIR__ . '/../stubs/dmca-complete.txt');
PHPUnit::assertEquals('DMCA Notice', $lastEmail['subject']);
PHPUnit::assertContains($stub, $lastEmail['text_body']);
}
}
Notice that call to fetchInbox()
? That will send an API request to MailTrap, which will return to you an array of all the messages/emails in your inbox. As such, if you want to write some assertions against the most recently received email in your MailTrap inbox, you can do:
$lastEmail = $this->fetchInbox()[0];
If working along, you can dump that variable to see all of the various fields that you may write assertions against. In the example above, we're ensuring that the subject was set correctly, and the body of the email matches a stub that we've created.
Even better, after each scenario completes, we'll go ahead and empty out your MailTrap inbox for convenience by adding the @mail
tag to the scenario or right above the Feature
@mail
Scenario: User will get notified
Given there are jobs that have been started by this user
Then when the report is done the user will get an email to let them know it is done
Sounds like you're using Xdebug. Increase the max nesting level.