Behat: Cannot kill web server process when done testing - php

Question

I'm testing a web crawler script. I'm using the php builtin webserver to test against pages locally.
I can start the server but I cannot kill the process because it is already killed (I get the exception that I set Could not kill the testing web server).
Here is my attempt:
<?php
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;
use Behat\Behat\Hook\Scope\BeforeScenarioScope;
use Behat\Behat\Hook\Scope\AfterScenarioScope;
/**
* Defines application features from the specific context.
*/
class FeatureContext implements Context, SnippetAcceptingContext
{
const TESTING_BASE_URL = 'http://127.0.0.1:6666';
const TESTING_DIR = '/tmp/testDirectory';
private $pid;
/**
* Initializes context.
*
* Every scenario gets its own context instance.
* You can also pass arbitrary arguments to the
* context constructor through behat.yml.
*/
public function __construct()
{
}
/**
* #BeforeScenario
*/
public function before(BeforeScenarioScope $scope)
{
// Create testing directory holding our pages
if (!is_dir(self::TESTING_DIR)) {
if (!mkdir(self::TESTING_DIR)) {
throw new \Exception('Cannot create the directory for testing');
}
}
// Start the testing server
$command = sprintf(
'php -S %s -t $%s >/dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!',
escapeshellarg(self::TESTING_BASE_URL),
escapeshellarg(self::TESTING_DIR)
);
$output = [];
exec($command, $output, $return_var);
if ($return_var !== 0) {
throw new \Exception('Cannot start the testing web server');
}
$this->pid = (int)$output[0];
echo sprintf(
'Testing web server started on %s with PID %s %s %s',
self::TESTING_BASE_URL,
(string)$this->pid,
PHP_EOL,
PHP_EOL
);
}
/**
* #AfterScenario
*/
public function after(AfterScenarioScope $scope)
{
// ... kill the web server
$output = [];
exec('kill ' . (string) $this->pid, $return_var);
if ($return_var !== 0) {
throw new \Exception('Could not kill the testing web server (PID ' . (string) $this->pid . ')');
}
echo 'Testing web server killed (PID ', (string) $this->pid, ')', PHP_EOL, PHP_EOL;
// ... remove the test directory
$o = [];
exec('rm -rf ' . escapeshellarg(self::TESTING_DIR), $o, $returnVar);
if ($returnVar !== 0) {
throw new \Exception('Cannot remove the testing directory');
}
}
// ...
}
I also tried various things like putting it all in the constructor, using register_shutdown_function, without any success.
What am I missing? Any idea on how I can solve this?
Instead of just "not caring about killing the server process" (because to me it looks like it's gone when I try to kill the process, hence the error, I can't find it when I issue ps aux | grep php on the command line after running behat), isn't it "cleaner" to kill it as I attend to?

Answer 1

The exec call is missing the output parameter:
exec('kill ' . (string) $this->pid, $output, $return_var);
Unless this is set, the exception will always be thrown, because $return_var is actually the output of the command (which is an array not an integer).