rdx/behat-variables

Store variables across Scenarios during Behat testing

Behat Variables

, _(*1)

Stores your custom variables across Scenarios during Feature testing., _(*2)

The idea

You're making users and profiles to test, and you want to use those creations further in the same Feature. You can't, because: 1) Behat arguments are literals, and 2) FeatureContext lives only for every Scenario, not for the entire Feature., _(*3)

With behat-variables, you can save & use those variables: user ids, passwords, activation tokens, etc., _(*4)

Given a new user "Fred"           # Your custom step, with a return value
And I save it into "UID"          # A provided step that saves that return value
When I go to "/users/<<UID>>"     # Custom step, with dynamic argument
Then I should see "Hello, Fred!"  # Custom step, with predictable content

The <<UID>> part is the magic. Works for any argument, not just URIs., _(*5)

Set up

In order to use variables in your Behat feature, you must do 2 things:, _(*6)

• Add the Feature Context class: rdx\behatvars\BehatVariablesContext
• Add the Extension class: rdx\behatvars\BehatVariablesExtension

See the Behat docs for where they fit in behat.yml, or see this repo's behat.yml:, _(*7)

default:
  suites:
    default:
      contexts:
        - rdx\behatvars\BehatVariablesContext
        - FeatureContext
  extensions:
      rdx\behatvars\BehatVariablesExtension: ~

And make sure your custom steps have a scalar return value, or an array of scalars:, _(*8)

/**
 * @Given a value :value
 */
public function aValue($value) {
  return $value;
}

/**
 * @Given values :value1 and :value2
 */
public function valuesAnd($value1, $value2) {
  return [$value1, $value2];
}

Examples

See features/simple.feature for very simple examples (with only 3 custom steps). It's the test used to test this package., _(*9)

Features

This package provides 1 step, in several formats:, _(*10)

(I|we) save (it|that|those|them) into "VARIABLE_NAME"

So you can make several custom step combinations:, _(*11)

Given "4" cars in the same shop                   # Custom
And we save those into "CAR1,CAR2,CAR3,CAR4"      # Provided

Given a user "Fred" in organization "McDonald's"  # Custom
And we save those into "USER,ORGANIZATION"        # Provided