Use Laravel Eloquent from within Behat/Mink FeatureContext - php

Question

This question assumes some knowledge of Laravel, Behat, and Mink.
With that in mind, I am having trouble making a simple call to the DB from within my Behat FeatureContext file which looks somewhat like this...
<?php
use App\Models\Db\User;
use Behat\Behat\Context\Context;
use Behat\Gherkin\Node\PyStringNode;
use Behat\Gherkin\Node\TableNode;
use Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext;
/**
* Defines application features from the specific context.
*/
class FeatureContext extends MinkContext implements Context {
public function __construct() {}
/**
* #Given I am authenticated with :email and :password
*/
public function iAmAuthenticatedWith($email, $password) {
User::where('email', $email)->firstOrFail();
$this->visitPath('/login');
$this->fillField('email', $email);
$this->fillField('password', $password);
$this->pressButton('Login');
}
}
When this scenario runs I get this error...
Fatal error: Call to a member function connection() on null (Behat\Testwork\Call\Exception\FatalThrowableError)
Which is caused by this line...
User::where('email', $email)->firstOrFail();
How do I use Laravel Eloquent (make DB calls) from within a Behat/Mink FeatureContext? Do I need to expose something within the constructor of my FeatureContext? Update/add a line within composer.json or behat.yml file?
If there is more than one way to solve this problem and it is worth mentioning, please do.
Additional Details
Laravel: 5.5.*
Behat: ^3.3
Mink Extension: ^2.2
Mink Selenium 2 Driver: ^1.3
Behat Config
default:
extensions:
Behat\MinkExtension\ServiceContainer\MinkExtension:
base_url: "" #omitted
default_session: selenium2
selenium2:
browser: chrome

Answer 1

Laravel need to setup the eloquent and the connection for this to work.
The easy way is to extend laravel TestCase and in the __constructor() call parent::setUp();
It will setup your test environment, like it does when you run php test units in Laravel:
/**
* Setup the test environment.
*
* #return void
*/
protected function setUp()
{
if (! $this->app) {
$this->refreshApplication();
}
$this->setUpTraits();
foreach ($this->afterApplicationCreatedCallbacks as $callback) {
call_user_func($callback);
}
Facade::clearResolvedInstances();
Model::setEventDispatcher($this->app['events']);
$this->setUpHasRun = true;
}
The refreshApplication() will call the createApplication() and it does bootstrap the Laravel and create the $this->app object.
/**
* Refresh the application instance.
*
* #return void
*/
protected function refreshApplication()
{
$this->app = $this->createApplication();
}