Codeception 1.8: Phalcon, Environments, DataProviders

This release brings lots of changes. Finally we got working DataProviders (the issue was opened for about a year), and @depends tag. But the details below. Let’s start with the most important new features:

Phalcon Framework Support

Phalcon is the fastest PHP framework in the world. And that’s not just a marketing slogan. Phalcon was developed as C extension, so it is already precompiled and loads into memory only once. Phalcon is modern framework with DI container, ORM (inspired by Doctrine), and templating engine (inspired by Twig). It is one of the most innovative projects in PHP world, so you should at least check it out.

If you already work with Phalcon, here is a good news for you. Codeception got Phalcon1 module, that allows you to write functional tests with minimum setup. Besides standard framework interface this module provides actions for session and database access. It also wraps all tests into nested transactions, and rollbacks them in the end. Thus, all your database tests run superfast.

Is there any Phalcon project tested with Codeception? Yes, it is the official Phalcon’s forum.

This module was developed by cujo and improved by davert. We hope you like it.

Environments

This is something you might not expect in the form it was produced, but, probably, that was long awaited. This is to run tests multiple times over different environments. The most common issue is running acceptance tests over different browsers: firefox, phantomjs, chrome. Now you can create 3 different configurations and you can get tests will be repeated 3 times: in firefox, in phantomjs, and in chrome. The second usecase is run tests over different databases.

Feature is pretty straightforward in use. You define the name of environment below the env key, and then you redefine any of configuration values you need.

``` yaml
class_name: WebGuy
modules:
    enabled:
        - WebDriver
        - WebHelper
    config:
        WebDriver:
            url: 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/'
            browser: 'firefox'

env:
    phantom:
         modules:
            config:
                WebDriver:
                    browser: 'phantomjs'

Advanced Usage chapter was updated.

DataProviders

You can use PHPUnit dataproviders in Codeception\TestCase\Test files. Yep. Finally.

Probably DataProviders are not really readable, as you need always to refer into data sets, which may be defined in the different part of a testcase. You can consider using examples of Codeception\Specify library, as for alternative for dataproviders.

Is there a way you can use data providers in scenario driven test? Not exactly, but you can emulate them with loops and conditional asserts:

<?php
foreach ($posts as $post) {
	$I->canSee($post->title,'.post h2');
}
?>

Depends

Declare depending tests in Cest and Test files. Works just as the original @depends of PHPUnit. In Cests you can combine this with @before annotation. More information in Advanced Usage.

Debug

Debug output was refactored, and moved out to Codeception\Util\Debug class. This class can be used globally, i.e in tests, helpers, - wherever you want. To print debug information you should call:

<?php
use Codeception\Util\Debug;
Debug::debug("This is working");
?>

This change dramatically improves debug output. You can also pause execution with pause static method of this class. Useful for debugging and tests development, implemented in WebDriver module as pauseExecution action.

Bugfixes and Minor Changes

• WebDriver module got pauseExecution method which pauses running test in debug mode.
• Generated PageObject file URL const was changed to static variable.

• waitForElementChange() callback return value was not being used by wheelsandcogs

  also in 1.7

• bugfix for making screenshots with WebDriver by Michael Wang.

  also in 1.7

• Doctrine2: handle NULL value in seeInRepository param array by imanzuk

  also in 1.7

• REST: fix adding parameters to url to non-GET HTTP methods by sheershoff
• REST: Added sendOPTIONS() and sendHEAD() requests for CORS testing by elazar
• Symfony2: fixed usage of profiler

• Strict declaratin error fixes for framework constraints

  also in 1.6, 1.7

Update

Warning. Module Unit was deprecated in 1.6 and was removed in 1.8. Please disable it in unit.suite.yml if you were using it. If you see this error:

Codeception PHP Testing Framework v1.8.0
Powered by PHPUnit 3.7.28 by Sebastian Bergmann.



  [Codeception\Exception\Configuration]
  Unit could not be found and loaded

Just disable Unit module. Thanks

If you prefer stability over features you can stay on 1.7 or 1.6 releases. We’ve got them updated too.

redownload your codeception.phar for update:

1.8.0

wget https://codeception.com/codecept.phar -O codecept.phar

1.7.3

wget https://codeception.com/releases/1.7.3/codecept.phar -O codecept.phar

1.6.12

wget https://codeception.com/releases/1.6.12/codecept.phar -O codecept.phar

for composer version

$ php composer.phar update

What to expect from 2.0

It is almost 2 years of Codeception, and we are planning to release 2.0 version as a next major to celebrate that. It is a major change, thus we can add few BC breaks. We are planning to:

• move to PHP 5.4. Not really necessary, yet it is getting hard to support 5.3.
• remove Mink entirely in favor of WebDriver for browser-testing and Goutte for headless testing.
• remove 2-times test execution (finally!).
• ??? (proposed by you)