In this chapter we will explain how you can extend and customize the file structure and test execution routines.
If your project consists of several applications (frontend, admin, api) or you are using the Symfony framework with its bundles, you may be interested in having all tests for all applications (bundles) executed in one runner. In this case you will get one report that covers the whole project.
Place the codeception.yml
file into the root folder of your project
and specify the paths to the other codeception.yml
configurations that you want to include:
include:
- frontend/src/*Bundle
- admin
- api/rest
paths:
output: _output
settings:
colors: false
You should also specify the path to the log
directory, where the reports and logs will be saved.
To avoid naming conflicts between Actor classes and Helper classes, they should be separated into namespaces.
To create test suites with namespaces you can add --namespace
option to the bootstrap command:
php vendor/bin/codecept bootstrap --namespace frontend
This will bootstrap a new project with the namespace: frontend
parameter in the codeception.yml
file.
Helpers will be in the frontend\Codeception\Module
namespace and Actor classes will be in the frontend
namespace.
Once each of your applications (bundles) has its own namespace and different Helper or Actor classes, you can execute all the tests in a single runner. Run the Codeception tests as usual, using the meta-config we created earlier:
php vendor/bin/codecept run
This will launch the test suites for all three applications and merge the reports from all of them. This is very useful when you run your tests on a Continuous Integration server and you want to get a single report in JUnit and HTML format. The code coverage report will be merged too.
If you want to run a specific suite from the application you can execute:
php vendor/bin/codecept run unit -c frontend
Where unit
is the name of suite and the -c
option specifies the path to the codeception.yml
configuration file to use.
In this example we will assume that there is frontend/codeception.yml
configuration file
and that we will execute the unit tests for only that app.
Codeception has limited capabilities to extend its core features. Extensions are not supposed to override current functionality, but can be useful if you are an experienced developer and you want to hook into the testing flow.
By default, one RunFailed
Extension is already enabled in your global codeception.yml
.
It allows you to rerun failed tests by using the -g failed
option:
php vendor/bin/codecept run -g failed
Codeception comes with bundled extensions located in ext
directory.
For instance, you can enable the Logger extension to log the test execution with Monolog:
extensions:
enabled:
- Codeception\Extension\RunFailed # default extension
- Codeception\Extension\Logger: # enabled extension
max_files: 5 # logger configuration
But what are extensions, anyway? Basically speaking, extensions are nothing more than event listeners based on the Symfony Event Dispatcher component.
Here are the events and event classes. The events are listed in the order in which they happen during execution.
All listed events are available as constants in Codeception\Events
class.
Event | When? | Triggered by |
---|---|---|
suite.before |
Before suite is executed | Suite, Settings |
test.start |
Before test is executed | Test |
test.before |
At the very beginning of test execution | Codeception Test |
step.before |
Before step | Step |
step.after |
After step | Step |
step.fail |
After failed step | Step |
test.fail |
After failed test | Test, Fail |
test.error |
After test ended with error | Test, Fail |
test.incomplete |
After executing incomplete test | Test, Fail |
test.skipped |
After executing skipped test | Test, Fail |
test.success |
After executing successful test | Test |
test.after |
At the end of test execution | Codeception Test |
test.end |
After test execution | Test |
suite.after |
After suite was executed | Suite, Result, Settings |
test.fail.print |
When test fails are printed | Test, Fail |
result.print.after |
After result was printed | Result, Printer |
There may be some confusion between test.start
/test.before
and test.after
/test.end
.
The start and end events are triggered by PHPUnit, but the before and after events are triggered by Codeception.
Thus, when you are using classical PHPUnit tests (extended from PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase
),
the before/after events won't be triggered for them. During the test.before
event you can mark a test
as skipped or incomplete, which is not possible in test.start
. You can learn more from
Codeception internal event listeners.
The extension class itself is inherited from Codeception\Extension
:
<?php
use \Codeception\Events;
class MyCustomExtension extends \Codeception\Extension
{
// list events to listen to
// Codeception\Events constants used to set the event
public static $events = array(
Events::SUITE_AFTER => 'afterSuite',
Events::SUITE_BEFORE => 'beforeTest',
Events::STEP_BEFORE => 'beforeStep',
Events::TEST_FAIL => 'testFailed',
Events::RESULT_PRINT_AFTER => 'print',
);
// methods that handle events
public function afterSuite(\Codeception\Event\SuiteEvent $e) {}
public function beforeTest(\Codeception\Event\TestEvent $e) {}
public function beforeStep(\Codeception\Event\StepEvent $e) {}
public function testFailed(\Codeception\Event\FailEvent $e) {}
public function print(\Codeception\Event\PrintResultEvent $e) {}
}
By implementing event handling methods you can listen for events and even update passed objects. Extensions have some basic methods you can use:
write
- prints to the screenwriteln
- prints to the screen with a new-line character at the endgetModule
- allows you to access a modulehasModule
- checks if a module is enabledgetModuleNames
- list all enabled modules_reconfigure
- can be implemented instead of overriding the constructorOnce you've implemented a simple extension class, you can require it in tests/_bootstrap.php
,
load it with Composer's autoloader defined in composer.json
, or store the class inside tests/_support
dir.
You can then enable it in codeception.yml
extensions:
enabled: [MyCustomExtension]
Extensions can also be enabled per suite inside suite configs (like acceptance.suite.yml
) and for a specific environment.
To enable extension dynamically, execute the run
command with --ext
option.
Provide a class name as a parameter:
codecept run --ext MyCustomExtension
codecept run --ext "\My\Extension"
If a class is in a Codeception\Extension
namespace you can skip it and provide only a shortname.
So Recorder extension can be started like this:
codecept run --ext Recorder
In the extension, you can access the currently passed options via the options
property.
You also can access the global configuration via the \Codeception\Configuration::config()
method.
If you want to have custom options for your extension, you can pass them in the codeception.yml
file:
extensions:
enabled: [MyCustomExtension]
config:
MyCustomExtension:
param: value
The passed in configuration is accessible via the config
property: $this->config['param']
.
Check out a very basic extension Notifier.
You can add your own commands to Codeception.
Your custom commands have to implement the interface Codeception\CustomCommandInterface, because there has to be a function to get the name of the command.
You have to register your command in the file codeception.yml
:
extensions:
commands: [Project\Command\MyCustomCommand]
If you want to activate the Command globally, because you are using more then one codeception.yml
file,
you have to register your command in the codeception.dist.yml
in the root folder of your project.
Please see the complete example
Group Objects are extensions listening for the events of tests belonging to a specific group. When a test is added to a group:
<?php
/**
* @group admin
*/
public function testAdminCreatingNewBlogPost(\AcceptanceTester $I)
{
}
This test will trigger the following events:
test.before.admin
step.before.admin
step.after.admin
test.success.admin
test.fail.admin
test.after.admin
A group object is built to listen for these events. It is useful when an additional setup is required
for some of your tests. Let's say you want to load fixtures for tests that belong to the admin
group:
<?php
namespace Group;
class Admin extends \Codeception\GroupObject
{
public static $group = 'admin';
public function _before(\Codeception\Event\TestEvent $e)
{
$this->writeln('inserting additional admin users...');
$db = $this->getModule('Db');
$db->haveInDatabase('users', array('name' => 'bill', 'role' => 'admin'));
$db->haveInDatabase('users', array('name' => 'john', 'role' => 'admin'));
$db->haveInDatabase('users', array('name' => 'mark', 'role' => 'banned'));
}
public function _after(\Codeception\Event\TestEvent $e)
{
$this->writeln('cleaning up admin users...');
// ...
}
}
GroupObjects can also be used to update the module configuration before running a test.
For instance, for nocleanup
group we prevent Doctrine2 module from wrapping test into transaction:
<?php
public static $group = 'nocleanup';
public function _before(\Codeception\Event\TestEvent $e)
{
$this->getModule('Doctrine2')->_reconfigure(['cleanup' => false]);
}
A group class can be created with php vendor/bin/codecept generate:group groupname
command.
Group classes will be stored in the tests/_support/Group
directory.
A group class can be enabled just like you enable an extension class. In the file codeception.yml
:
extensions:
enabled: [Group\Admin]
Now the Admin group class will listen for all events of tests that belong to the admin
group.
Alternative reporters can be implemented as extension.
There are DotReporter and SimpleReporter extensions included.
Use them to change output or use them as an example to build your own reporter. They can be easily enabled with --ext
option
codecept run --ext DotReporter
If you want to use it as default reporter enable it in codeception.yml
.
But what if you need to change the output format of the XML or JSON results triggered with the --xml
or --json
options?
Codeception uses PHPUnit printers and overrides them. If you need to customize one of the standard reporters you can override them too.
If you are thinking on implementing your own reporter you should add a reporters
section to codeception.yml
and override one of the standard printer classes with one of your own:
reporters:
xml: Codeception\PHPUnit\Log\JUnit
html: Codeception\PHPUnit\ResultPrinter\HTML
report: Codeception\PHPUnit\ResultPrinter\Report
All PHPUnit printers implement the PHPUnit_Framework_TestListener interface. It is recommended to read the code of the original reporter before overriding it.
Codeception setup can be customized for the needs of your application. If you build a distributable application and you have a personalized configuration you can build an Installation template which will help your users to start testing on their projects.
Codeception has built-in installation templates for
They can be executed with init
command:
codecept init Acceptance
To init tests in specific folder use --path
option:
codecept init Acceptance --path acceptance_tests
You will be asked several questions and then config files will be generated and all necessary directories will be created. Learn from the examples above to build a custom Installation Template. Here are the basic rules you should follow:
Codeception\InitTemplate
class and implement setup
method.Codeception\Template
namespace so Codeception could locate them by class namesay
, saySuccess
, sayWarning
, sayError
, ask
, to interact with a user.createDirectoryFor
, createEmptyDirectory
methods to create directoriescreateHelper
, createActor
methods to create helpers and actors.Each feature mentioned above may help dramatically when using Codeception to automate the testing of large projects, although some features may require advanced knowledge of PHP. There is no "best practice" or "use cases" when we talk about groups, extensions, or other powerful features of Codeception. If you see you have a problem that can be solved using these extensions, then give them a try.