Behat (software)

Last updated
Developer(s) Konstantin Kudryashov
Initial release8 September 2010;15 years ago (2010-09-08) [1]
Stable release
3.24.0 / 11 September 2025;1 day ago (2025-09-11) [1]
Repository
Written in PHP
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Behavior-driven development
License MIT License
Website behat.org

Behat is a test framework for behavior-driven development written in the PHP programming language. Behat was created by Konstantin Kudryashov and its development is hosted on GitHub.

Contents

Purpose

Behat is intended to aid communication between developers, clients and other stakeholders during a software development process. It allows the clear documentation of testable examples of the software's intended behaviour. Behat test scenarios are written with Gherkin, [2] a business-readable domain-specific language following defined patterns.

Benefits

Tests can be run at any point new code is introduced into a codebase to confirm no regressions within the existing test coverage are introduced. It can be used to directly test php code and is often used with Selenium to remote control browsers as part of the scenarios. The browsers under remote control can take videos [3] or screenshots of failures. Using selenium or tools like selenoid [4] a "grid" of browsers can be remote controlled for parallel test execution. There is also a module for running php only scenarios. [5]

Like other BDD frameworks, Behat scenarios are a series of Given, When, and Then steps that explain a business case. The definition of these steps exist within method annotations of a class that extends the BehatContext. [6]

Behat can output test results in a number of different formats, including JUnit XML and HTML [7]

Examples

The preconditions after "Given" correspond to the PHP method name to execute:

Feature: Simple description of this feature’s story  Describe benefit, role and feature or user story  Use as many lines as neededBackground:    Given some step run for all scenariosScenario: Scenario or example description    Given I setup preconditions with:      | data column 1 | data column 2 |      | alice         | bob           |When I press the "blue" buttonThen the result is:"""    A multiple line    string of data"""    #comments can be added as neededScenario Outline: Scenario or example description    Given I setup config with "<setting>"When I push button "<button>"Then "<result>" happensExamples:      | setting | button | result           |      | a       | red    | there is a beep  |      | b       | blue   | there is no beep |

References

  1. 1 2 "Behat/CHANGELOG.md at master · Behat/Behat". github.com. Retrieved 2021-03-27.
  2. ↑ "Cucumber Common Components". GitHub . 14 November 2021.
  3. ↑ community, Alexander Andryashin, Ivan Krutov, Kirill Merkushev and the Aerokube. "Aerokube Selenoid | A cross browser Selenium solution for Docker". aerokube.com. Retrieved 2024-02-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ aerokube/selenoid, Aerokube, 2024-02-17, retrieved 2024-02-19
  5. ↑ Marynicz, Daniel (2023-11-17), Daniel-Marynicz/BehatParallelExtension , retrieved 2024-02-19
  6. ↑ BDD With Behat - Tuts+ Code Tutorial. Code.tutsplus.com (2013-12-23). Retrieved on 2015-03-19.
  7. ↑ Vanmeert, Neal (2024-01-24), dutchiexl/BehatHtmlFormatterPlugin , retrieved 2024-02-19


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