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Behat

Vortex uses Behat for Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) testing. Behat allows to write human-readable stories that describe the behavior of the application. Behat tests primarily focus on critical user journeys, serving as comprehensive end-to-end validations.

Vortex provides full Behat support, including configuration in behat.yml and a browser container to run tests interactively in a real browser with a VNC viewer.

Additional features include:

  1. Behat Drupal Extension - an extension to work with Drupal.
  2. Behat Steps - a library of re-usable Behat steps.
  3. Behat Screenshot - extension to capture screenshots on-demand and on failure.
  4. Behat Progress formatter - extension to show progress as TAP and failures inline.
  5. Parallel profiles - configuration to allow running tests in parallel.

Running tests​

# Run all Behat tests
ahoy test-bdd
# Run specific feature file
ahoy test-bdd tests/behat/features/homepage.feature
# Run scenarios with specific tag
ahoy test-bdd -- --tags=@smoke

Discovering available step definitions​

# Generate step definitions reference
ahoy test-bdd -- --definitions=l

FeatureContext​

The FeatureContext.php file comes with included steps from Behat steps package.

You can add your custom steps into this file.

Profiles​

Behat's default profile configured with sensible defaults to allow running it with provided extensions.

In continuous integration environment, the profile can be overridden using
$VORTEX_CI_BEHAT_PROFILE environment variable.

Parallel runs​

In continuous integration pipeline, Behat tests can run within multiple runners to increase the speed of the test suite. To achieve this, Behat tags are used to mark features and scenarios with @p* tags.

Out of the box, Vortex provides support for unlimited parallel runners, but only 2 parallel profiles p0 and p1: a feature can be tagged by either @p0 or @p1 to run in a dedicated runner, or with both tags to run in both runners.

Note that you can easily add more p* profiles in your behat.yml by copying existing p1 profile and changing several lines of configuration.

Features without @p* tags will always run in the first CI pipeline runner, so even if you forget to tag the feature, it will still be allocated to a runner.

If CI pipeline has only one runner - a default profile will be used and all tests (except for those that tagged with @skipped) will be run.

Skipping tests​

Add @skipped tag to a feature or scenario to exclude it from the test run.

Screenshots​

Test screenshots are stored into .logs/screenshots location by default, which can be overwritten using $BEHAT_SCREENSHOT_DIR variable (courtesy of Behat Screenshot package).

In continuous integration pipeline, screenshots are stored as build artifacts. In GitHub Actions, they can be downloaded from the Summary tab. In CircleCI they are accessible in the Artifacts tab.

Format​

Out of the box, Vortex comes with Behat Progress formatter output formatter to show progress as TAP and failures inline. This allows to continue test runs after a failure while maintaining a minimal output.

Reporting​

Test reports are stored in .logs/behat directory.

Continuous integration pipeline usually uses them to track test performance and stability.

Boilerplate test features​

Vortex provides BDD tests boilerplate for homepage and login user journeys.

These boilerplate tests run in continuous integration pipeline when you install Vortex and can be used as a starting point for writing your own.

Writing tests​

For project-specific test writing conventions (user story format, standard user types, test data conventions), see your project's docs/testing.md file.

The docs/testing.md file is scaffolded when you install Vortex and should be maintained by your project team to document agreed-upon testing practices.