index.rst

Mink Extension

You can use Behat to describe anything, that you can describe in business logic. It’s tools, gui applications, web applications. Most interesting part is web applications. First, behavioral testing already exists in web world - it’s called functional or acceptance testing. Almost all popular frameworks and languages provide functional testing tools. Today we’ll talk about how to use Behat for functional testing of web applications. Mink is a tool exactly for that and this extension provides integration for it.

Basically, MinkExtension is an integration layer between Behat 3.0+ and Mink 1.4+ and it provides:

• Additional services for Behat (Mink, Sessions, Drivers).
• Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkAwareContext which provides Mink instance for your contexts.
• Base Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext context which provides base step definitions and hooks for your contexts or subcontexts. Or it could be even used as context on its own.

Installation

This extension requires:

• Behat 3.0+
• Mink 1.4+

Through Composer

The easiest way to keep your suite updated is to use Composer:

1. Define dependencies in your composer.json:

   {
       "require-dev": {
           ...
   
           "behat/mink-extension": "~2.0@dev"
       }
   }

2. Install/update your vendors:

   $ composer update behat/mink-extension

3. Activate extension by specifying its class in your behat.yml:

   # behat.yml
   default:
     # ...
     extensions:
       Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
         base_url:  'http://example.com'
         sessions:
           default:
             goutte: ~

Usage

After installing extension, there would be 6 usage options available for you:

1. Extending Behat\MinkExtension\Context\RawMinkContext in your feature suite. This will give you ability to use preconfigured Mink instance altogether with some convenience methods: * getSession($name = null) * assertSession($name = null) RawMinkContext doesn't provide any hooks or definitions, so you can inherit from it in as many contexts as you want - you'll never get RedundantStepException.

2. Extending Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext with one of your contexts. Exactly like previous option, but also provides lot of predefined step definitions out of the box. As this context provides step definitions and hooks, you can use it only once inside your feature context tree.

   <?php
   
   use Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext;
   
   class FeatureContext extends MinkContext
   {
       /**
        * @Then /^I wait for the suggestion box to appear$/
        */
       public function iWaitForTheSuggestionBoxToAppear()
       {
           $this->getSession()->wait(5000, "$('.suggestions-results').children().length > 0");
       }
   }

   Warning

   Keep in mind, that you can not have multiple step definitions with same regex. It will cause RedundantException. So, you can inherit from MinkContext only with one of your context/subcontext classes.

3. Adding Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext as context in your suite. Exactly like previous option, but gives you ability to keep your main context class clean.

   default:
     suites:
       my_suite:
         contexts:
           - FeatureContext
           - Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext

   Note

   Keep in mind, that you can not have multiple step definitions with same regex. It will cause RedundantException. So, you can inherit from MinkContext only with one of your context/subcontext classes.

4. Implementing Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkAwareContext with your context.

There's common things these methods. In each of those, target context will implement setMink(Mink $mink) and setMinkParameters(array $parameters) methods. Those methods would be automatically called immediately after each context creation before each scenario. And this $mink instance will be preconfigured based on the settings you've provided in your behat.yml.

Configuration

MinkExtension comes with flexible configuration system, that gives you ability to configure Mink inside Behat to fulfil all your needs.

Sessions

You can register as many Mink session as you want. For each session, you will need to choose the driver you want to use.

default:
    extensions:
        Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
            sessions:
                first_session:
                    selenium2: ~
                second_session:
                    goutte: ~
                third_session:
                    selenium2: ~

MinkExtension will set the default Mink session for each scenario based on the configuration settings default_session and javascript_session and on scenario tags:

• A scenario tagged with @mink:foo will use foo as default session;
• A scenario tagged with @javascript will use the javascript session as default session;
• Other scenarios will use the default session.

If it is not configured explicitly, the javascript session is set to the first session using a javascript driver in the order of the configuration (it would be first_session in the example above as selenium2 supports Javascript). If it is not configured explicitly, the default session is set to the first session using a non-javascript driver if any, or to the first javascript session otherwise (it would be second_session above as goutte does not support javascript).

Drivers

First of all, there's drivers enabling configuration. MinkExtension comes with support for 6 drivers out of the box:

• GoutteDriver - headless driver without JavaScript support. In order to use it, modify your behat.yml profile:

  default:
      extensions:
          Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
              sessions:
                  my_session:
                      goutte: ~

In case you use Behat/Mink/Goutte to test your application, and want to test an application secured with HTTPS, but with a self-signed certificate, you can use the following parameters to avoid the validation error triggered by Guzzle :

default:
  extensions:
    Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
      sessions:
        my_session:
          goutte:
            guzzle_parameters:
              ssl.certificate_authority: false

• Selenium2Driver - javascript driver. In order to use it, modify your behat.yml profile:

  default:
      extensions:
          Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
              sessions:
                  my_session:
                      selenium2: ~

• SaucelabsDriver - special flavor of the Selenium2Driver configured to use the selenium2 hosted installation of saucelabs.com. In order to use it, modify your behat.yml profile:

  default:
      extensions:
          Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
              sessions:
                  my_session:
                      saucelabs: ~

• SeleniumDriver - javascript driver. In order to use it, modify your behat.yml profile:

  default:
      extensions:
          Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
              sessions:
                  my_session:
                      selenium: ~

• SahiDriver - javascript driver. In order to use it, modify your behat.yml profile:

  default:
      extensions:
          Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
              sessions:
                  my_session:
                      sahi: ~

• ZombieDriver - zombie.js javascript headless driver. In order to use it, modify your behat.yml profile:

  default:
      extensions:
          Behat\MinkExtension\Extension:
              sessions:
                  default:
                      zombie: ~

Note

phar version of Mink comes bundles with all 5 drivers and you don't need to do anything except enabling them in order to use them.

But if you're using Composer, you need to install drivers that you need first:

• GoutteDriver - behat/mink-goutte-driver
• SeleniumDriver - behat/mink-selenium-driver
• Selenium2Driver (also used for Saucelabs) - behat/mink-selenium2-driver
• SahiDriver - behat/mink-sahi-driver
• ZombieDriver - behat/mink-zombie-driver

Note

All drivers share same API, which means that you could use multiple drivers for the same suite - which one fits your needs for concrete scenarios. Don't try to stick to single driver as there's simply no universal solution - every driver has its pros and cons.

Additional Parameters

There's other useful parameters, that you can use to configure your suite:

• base_url - if you're using relative paths in your *.feature files (and you should), then this option will define which url use as a basename for them.
• files_path - there's special step definition for file upload inputs usage. You can use relative paths in those steps. files_path defines base path in which Mink should search those relative files.
• show_cmd - there's special definition in MinkExtension, that saves currently opened page into temporary file and opens it with some browser utility (for debugging). This option defines command to be used for opening. For example: show_cmd: 'firefox %s'.
• show_tmp_dir - the temporary folder used to show the opened page (defaults to the system temp dir)
• show_auto - Whether the opened page should be shown automatically when a step fails.
• browser_name - meta-option, that defines which browser to use for Sahi, Selenium and Selenium2 drivers.
• default_session - defines default session (driver) to be used for all untagged scenarios. Could be any enabled session name.
• javascript_session - defines javascript session (driver) (the one, which will be used for @javascript tagged scenarios). Could be any enabled session name.
• mink_loader - path to a file loaded to make Mink available (useful when using the PHAR archive for Mink, useless when using Composer)