I would like to implement some basic acceptance tests for my company's legacy PHP app. Selenium WebDriver looks like the best fit, but I need advice on what testing framework to use.
Option 1
Our unit tests are written in Peridot PHP, and I know WebDriver can be run from PHP via php-webdriver. So, it looks like I should be able to write a suite of Peridot tests that use the php-webdriver API to interact with the site. It's been done for PHPUnit, and at a glance I don't see why Peridot can't do the same (gulp).
Option 2
Alternatively, I also know the Codeception framework integrates well with WebDriver. The nice thing about this is that Codeception takes care of setting up the WebDriver server and loading a test database. It also allows for a very nice, readable set of English-language tests, although it would mean maintaining two separate testing frameworks.
Considerations
How completely does Codeception cover the WebDriver set of commands? (i.e. can I do anything I might try in the Selenium IDE through Codeception?)
Does Codeception allow me to use the PageObject design pattern?
What kind of learning curve would I be facing without Codeception in terms of setting up my WebDriver server and test database? Does Codeception even make it that much easier?
There are Firefox plugins to convert 'Selenese' (html) test cases into PHPUnit or Codeception format. The PHPUnit test cases would need to be adapted to Peridot, but the Codeception converter is still in alpha and doesn't convert everything. I would rather not use these a great deal, but they would definitely help with the learning curve. How reliable are either one of these?
An official WebDriver plugin is definitely on the way for Peridot, but in the meantime, it's pretty easy to mix in WebDriver support using scopes.
We actually use WebDriver to demonstrate scopes here:
https://github.com/peridot-php/peridot-scope-example
Related
I'm working on a project that is stuck in php4 and I'm intending to run some UnitTests for some new areas that I'm working on it.
What is the best framework to do UnitTest on PHP4?
Thanks in advance
You can try
1)Simpletest
It is a PHP unit test and web test framework.It has support for SSL, forms, frames, proxies and basic authentication. The idea is that common but fiddly PHP tasks, such as logging into a site, can be tested easily.
2)PHPUnit Automated Unit Testing Framework
It provides a simple framework for creating a test suite to automate testing of functions and classes. PHPUnit stands alone as a good tool for testing classes or a set of functions and will ease your development cycle and help you to avoid endless debug sessions.
I am new to testing. All i knew was we PHPunit for testing various functions within class and then i know selenium for browser testing.
I know we can write php to link with selenium web driver to do headless testing of browser.
I am not able to get how does behat and mink come in there. Are these seperate from selenium and they are the alternatives of selenium.
Can i do aweb application tetsing without beaht, mink and only with selenium and php
PHPUnit and Behat are similar, both being testing frameworks. They allow you to test your code, by using different approaches:
PHPUnit tests are based on code you write to check how your classes behave under the required circunstances. A lot of people use this type of framework to practice TDD, but you can of course write tests after the code, or for code written a long time ago.
Behat tests are written in a human readable way, and they are supposed to allow everyone involved in the project to read them. This type of testing is called BDD. You can write tests that explain in (nearly) plain english how your system is supposed to behave.
IMO PHPUnit is more general and is the preferred way of writing most tests. I use Behat for testing my systems general behavior, and PHPUnit for unit testing every class and method independently of others.
On the other side, Mink is a library that allows you to browse programatically, using PHP, and access the contents. It can be used to control in a unified way a lot of browsing systems like Selenium, Zombie, etc. each of them based on different technologies.
You can use Mink outside Behat, but they are usually used together because this way you can write tests that show how a website behaves: Given I enter my credentials in the login form, And press the submit button, I should see my profile page...
And yes, you can use PHPUnit and Selenium together as explained in the docs...
I recently joined a company that uses codeigniter. I have been using nodejs and rails a ton so I feel like I am missing BDD like tools (rspec/jasmine/mocha). Does PHP and/or CodeIgniter have any sort of CLI based testing suite. If so, how should I structure my app? Any good conventions that can be followed?
There's a project called CIUnit that integrates phpunit to codeigniter and provides some helpful functions, and make it a generally pleasant experience. Unfortunately the official branch is stopped at CI version 1.7.2, but there's a fork that I've been using for 2.1.2.
This gives you the usual xUnit style test suites, code coverage report generators, selenium integration, mock and stub objects and such.
Two most popular PHP BDD frameworks should work just fine with any PHP project:
Behat (StoryBDD)
PHPSpec (SpecBDD)
Today's best solution would be PHPUnit and Selenium. I wrote articles covering the usage here:
On PHPUnit: http://taiar.github.io/php/2013/11/08/testing-codeigniter-applications-with-phpunit/
On PHPUnit with Selenium: http://taiar.github.io/php/2014/04/21/acceptance-tests-on-codeigniter-with-phpunit-and-selenium/
Is it possible to use Cucumber outside Rails? I'd like to start using it for testing some of my PHP applications, but I really don't know how to start.
Probably the easiest way would be creating a Rails project only to run Cucumber features, but that seems like to me as overkill.
What is the simplest way to set up Cucumber for testing a non-Rails application?
Check out:
https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/php
It is easy to use cucumber with PHP, even managing the database.
Checkout http://everzet.com/Behat/
(the URL appears to have changed to http://behat.org/)
Cited from the cucumber website:
Cucumber works with Ruby, Java, .NET, Flex or web applications written in any language. It has been translated to over 30 spoken languages.
Here's a great example of how to functionally test a PHP Webapp using Cucumber ... it will show you how to set up your test folder and where to put steps
http://jystewart.net/2008/11/10/testing-php-apps-with-ruby-tools/
Check out what this guy has done with Capybara.
Capbyara is a package that lets you choose your CLI browser driver - basically you can preface tests with #javascript and the Scenario will be played out using Selenium's very powerful chrome ... this allows you to smoothly test javascript where required!!!
http://otaqui.com/blog/1072/testing-remote-php-websites-with-capybara-cucumber-mechanize-selenium-2-webdriver-and-saucelabs/
Further, I've been checking out this link, where the author uses Cuke4PHP to integrate PHPUnit with Cucumber ... this would then let you wrap PHPUnit tests in CucumberSteps ... allowing you to behaviorally test your application and DB using your existing PHP code
http://lucato.it/php-bdd-cucumber-cuke4php
I myself am trying to meld all these pieces together into first a working and then robust test platform for a heavy-duty existing PHP webapp ... but I just began. Will update you if I make a good progress.
You could definitely look at Behat and Mink. Behat is a runner for cucumber's Gherkin syntax (Given, When, Thens) and Mink lets Behat run real browsers. It provides you with a single API across several browser drivers, quite similar to Ruby's Capybara.
While using Cucumber and something like Webrat or Selenium to test a non Ruby application is ok, sticking with PHP if that's what your app is written has manifold benefits - developer skillset and ease of app setup (the kind of stuff you do in Given steps) being the most obvious.
Behat, with Mink, PhantomJS and Sahi extensions, is a great BDD combo for php. If you are coming at it from a QA perspective, anyway.
Which unit testing framework do you use for Symfony?
Lime or PHPUnit? What are the pros and cons of using them?
In my opinion, here are a few things that come to my mind :
PHPUnit is more integrated with other tools, like, for instance,
Selenium (PHPUnit can use it to open true real browsers to test your site)
phpUnderControl for continuous-integration
PHPUnit works well with Xdebug, to generate code-coverage reports
PHPUnit is more widely used ; which probably means more support
But note I don't work with symfony, nor lime...
Still, I've never heards anyone speak about it, except for those working with symfony -- that not a good thing, for the day you'll have to work with another framework (yes, this happens ^^ )
One thing that's not in PHPUnit :
"false" browser (being able to do HTTP Requests to the application, without using Selenium to open a real browser)
But some frameworks (Zend Framework does, with it's Zend_Test component) integrate with PHPUnit (or use it), while allowing injection of data into the MVC and fetching of the response, without having to issue any HTTP Request.
I don't know if symfony allows that, but that's a nice thing with ZF/PHPUnit ^^
(Yes, not a symfony-specific answer ; but of the things I said must still be valid with that framework)
Lime is a much more simple testing framework, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you want to use it.
The symfony library itself uses its own testing framework, Lime, to test its code base. From the symfony book:
It is based on the Test::More Perl
library, and is TAP compliant, which
means that the result of tests is
displayed as specified in the Test
Anything Protocol, designed for better
readability of test output.
I cannot vouch for the statement that the lime framework is "more lightweight" than other PHP testing frameworks as the symfony docs claim, but I do really like that it's built right into your symfony project and works well with the symfony command line tools without any additional configuration. One thing that is especially cool is that the lime tests within symfony are set to run within your "test" environment which has it's own database, symfony cache (which gets cleared out during each test session), and environment variables. This comes in handy when you want to do functional testing (checking server response and your html output in your modules/actions, versus basic unit testing). I also like that lime is super easy to pick up and understand since it's so simple. You also have the ability to put your tests into YAML configuration file rather than write the tests by hand.
Pascal is entirely right that PHPUnit is much more widely used and you'd be able to use it in non-symfony projects. There is even a plugin for it, PHPUnit symfony plugin. My best advice would be to use lime if you just wanted to jump right into writing simple tests while you develop your symfony app. But, if you have the time and hope to use these testing skills outside of the symfony world, or bring in pre-existing PHPUnit tests into your symfony code, it'd be worth your time to check out the plugin and give it a spin.