When *I* do Something: Handling the Current User

Hey Anthony R.!

Hmmm, interesting. What driver are you using? Goutte? Selenium? Or the Symfony driver? My first thought is that, unless you're using the Symfony driver, this should not happen. The reason is that, if you use something like Goutte or Selenium that makes real HTTP requests, the kernel inside your *Context files is booted, and remains booted throughout the entire test suite. So the shutdown should never happen. But if you're using the Symfony driver, then yea, it will shutdown and reboot the kernel between each request - you would indeed likely be in this boat!

I do have one idea to get around it: store the $currentUserId instead. Then, add a getCurrentUser() method that always uses that value to query for a fresh object from the EntityManager. That should guarantee it's always fresh :).

Cheers!

Ryan! This is exactly right, I was using Symfony driver and I have now switched to Goutte driver - thank you! You are a legend! Greetings to you and the team from Australia.

Yo Anthony R.!

Woohoo! Greetings back to Australia from us (Michigan USA, Mexico and Ukraine) :D

Cheers!

Hey Dan_M

Working in isolation with a dedicated Database is the *way* to do your testing. I believe you have something misconfigured.
Are you using the Symfony2 extension?
Can you show me your behat.yml file?

Cheers!

Yes, I am using the Symfony2 extension.

My behat.yml is pretty basic:

default:
    extensions:
        Behat\MinkExtension:
            base_url: http://localhost:8000
            browser_name: 'chrome'
            goutte: ~
            selenium2: ~

        Behat\Symfony2Extension:

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

For what it's worth, I'm using the following:
behat 3.4.1
symfony 3.3.10

Aha! I get it. I installed behat/mink and behat/mink-browserkit-driver and updated my behat.yml to the following:

default:
    extensions:
        Behat\Symfony2Extension: ~
        Behat\MinkExtension:
            base_url: http://localhost:8000
            browser_name: 'chrome'
            goutte: ~
            selenium2: ~
            sessions:
                default:
                    symfony2: ~
    suites:
        default:
            contexts:
                - FeatureContext
                - Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext

Now behat runs against the server in the test environment without my having to start the server.

Thanks!

Hmmm...with this behat.yml, my @javascript annotations still want to run on the built-in server (dev environment) instead of using the symfony2 extension server in the test mode. What am I missing?

Yo Dan_M!

Ok, let's talk about a few possibilities :). First, using the symfony2 "session" is fine - this is how you solved that pesky "different databases" problem - nice work! A different solution to that problem (and one you will probably need to do) is to add a new front controller - e.g. app_test.php that is identical to app_dev.php except that it boots the AppKernel() in the test environment. Then, you should be able to update your base_url to http://localhost:8000/app_test.php.

Next issue: why does adding @javascript not cause the selenium session to be used? I'm not sure... but try changing the annotation to @mink:selenium2 - the @javascript annotation is "sort of" short for this. We can see if that makes any difference. I've actually not run into this issue yet... so it must be something minor...

Cheers!

I set up app_test.php, started the selenium driver, started the server with "console --env=test server:run", then ran behat against a scenario with @javascript, and everything went according to plan.

When I use either @javascript or @mink:selenium2 without first staring the server, the browser opens but I get a site failed to connect error. (I'm on Windows 10, by the way.)

All in all, that's OK. I have a way to start the server in test mode and run javascript tests against it.

Thanks!

Hey Dan_M

I'm glad we could figure it out!
One more thing, I think you don't have to start your server in test mode in order to run your tests, try starting it as normal and try again. If I'm wrong, let me know :)

Have a nice day

Hey MolloKhan

You're right, of course. When the selenium driver runs, it goes to the url given as base_url in the config. Because that's http://localhost:8000/app_test.php, it hits the test database.

Thanks!

Besides Ryan's comment, don't forget that you need to have Selenium server running whenever you want to use @javascript annotation