oro-behat-testing

OroCommerce v6.1 Behat Integration Testing

Oro extends Behat with auto-discovered suite configuration, element abstractions over Mink, Alice fixture loading, feature-tag-driven service mocking, and automatic database isolation. A bundle's Behat assets live under Tests/Behat/ — suite config, contexts, elements, page objects, and Alice fixtures. The entry point is the bundle's Tests/Behat/behat.yml, which Oro's extension discovers at boot time. No per-project registration is required for the common case.

Canonical Suite Config

This is the reference Tests/Behat/behat.yml combining suite, shared contexts, elements, and a page object:

oro_behat_extension:
  shared_contexts:
    - Oro\Bundle\TestFrameworkBundle\Tests\Behat\Context\OroMainContext

  suites:
    AcmeDemoBundle:
      contexts:
        - Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Tests\Behat\Context\GridContext
        - Acme\Bundle\DemoBundle\Tests\Behat\Context\FeatureContext
      paths:
        - '@AcmeDemoBundle/Tests/Behat/Features'

  elements:
    Demo Login Form:
      selector: '#login-form'
      class: Oro\Bundle\TestFrameworkBundle\Behat\Element\Form
      options:
        mapping:
          Username: '_username'
          Password: '_password'

  pages:
    Demo Dashboard:
      class: Acme\Bundle\DemoBundle\Tests\Behat\Page\DemoDashboard
      route: 'acme_demo_dashboard'

Two Suite Registration Forms

Oro supports both auto-discovery and manual symfony_bundle registration. Auto-discovery (the hero example above) works whenever the suite key matches a registered bundle name and paths points to a @BundleName/... path inside that bundle. Manual form is necessary when the suite name differs from the bundle, when you want multiple suites in one bundle, or when paths are non-standard:

oro_behat_extension:
  suites:
    MyCustomSuite:
      type: symfony_bundle
      bundle: AcmeDemoBundle
      contexts:
        - Acme\Bundle\DemoBundle\Tests\Behat\Context\ImportContext
      paths:
        - '@AcmeDemoBundle/Tests/Behat/Features/Import'

See references/suite-config.md for the full shape including shared_contexts, nested xpath locators, element delegation, and embedded form mapping.

behat.yml.dist vs behat.yml

The project root behat.yml.dist is committed and holds shared defaults (Mink base_url, browser profiles, formatters). A local behat.yml is gitignored and overrides per-developer settings — most commonly base_url for non-default Docker port mappings and Chrome binary paths. Oro's bin/behat loads behat.yml if present, otherwise falls back to behat.yml.dist. Never commit behat.yml; it will break other developers' environments.

A separate but equally important file is config/config_behat_test.yml — this is application-level config (not Behat extension config) that takes effect when a feature is tagged @behat-test-env and the runner is invoked with --behat-test-env. Use it to swap service implementations for mocks or to activate test-only bundles. See references/feature-tag-mocking.md.

Fixtures and References

Alice YAML fixtures live in Tests/Behat/Features/Fixtures/ and load via a tag on the feature: @fixture-OroUserBundle:user.yml. The colon between bundle and filename is mandatory — omitting it silently fails to load the fixture. Query parameters ?user=admin and ?user_reference=xss_user apply the fixture under a specific security context. Four references exist without any fixture: @admin, @adminRole, @organization, @business_unit. Custom references are registered via a service tagged oro_behat.reference_repository_initializer. Details including inline fixtures and cross-bundle include: directives in references/fixtures.md.

Running Tests

The canonical invocation matching Oro's own Jenkins pipeline is:

bin/behat -vv -f pretty -o std -f junit -o var/logs/behat --strict \
  --consumers=2 -s AcmeDemoBundle

The dual formatter (pretty for humans, junit for CI artifacts) is standard — drop it and you lose test result collection in CI. --strict fails on undefined or pending steps. -s AcmeDemoBundle scopes to one suite. --consumers=2 runs the MQ consumer layer inside the Behat process — note this coexists with a long-running consumer container in a full stack; both layers exist simultaneously. To discover step definitions with full examples use bin/behat -di -s AcmeDemoBundle | grep -i "cart"; -dl gives the shorter list-only form. See references/chrome-setup.md for the Chrome flags required to run headless in Docker and references/v6.1.md for the full oro:install command Oro's CI uses to provision the test database.

Feature Tag Mocking

Define candidate mocks in Tests/Behat/parameters.yml and use oro_test.behat.feature_tag_aware_factory to pick one based on feature/scenario tags. At runtime, a feature tagged @use-paypal-mock gets the PayPal stub; an untagged feature falls back to the default. This is the supported way to stub external APIs in Behat — never hand-roll network interception. Details in references/feature-tag-mocking.md.

Key Pitfalls

1. @fixture-file.yml without the bundle prefix — Alice silently loads nothing, the scenario runs against an empty database, and you chase missing-entity errors instead of the real cause. Always @fixture-BundleName:file.yml.
2. Skipping shared_contexts while adding a new suite — Contexts listed there propagate automatically into every suite. Omit it and your new suite quietly lacks OroMainContext, so core steps like "I login as admin" throw UndefinedStep at runtime, not config time.
3. No Elasticsearch isolator and no MessageQueue isolator by design — Oro's isolation package resets the database between scenarios but does not reset the search index or the MQ state. Features that index products or emit messages leak state into the next scenario. Order scenarios defensively and flush indices explicitly when it matters.
4. Raw CSS selectors embedded in step definitions — works today, fragile tomorrow when the template changes. Define an Element in behat.yml and reference it by name; the selector lives in one place and breaks loudly, not in twenty step files.
5. --skip-isolators-tag does not exist in 6.1 — older Oro docs and community posts reference it but the 6.1 CLI rejects it as an unknown option. The current flag is --skip-isolators (kills all isolation) for e2e runs; leave isolation on for local integration runs.

See Also

• references/suite-config.md — Both suite registration forms, shared_contexts, element YAML with nested xpath and delegation, page objects, behat.yml.dist vs behat.yml
• references/fixtures.md — Alice locations, @fixture-Bundle:file.yml syntax, security query params, built-in references, ReferenceRepositoryInitializer, inline and cross-bundle fixtures
• references/feature-tag-mocking.md — parameters.yml factory pattern, config/config_behat_test.yml activation, runtime tag resolution
• references/chrome-setup.md — ChromeDriver install and flags, Oro Chrome extension mount, headless Docker flags, PHP memory limits
• references/v6.1.md — Mailcatcher env vars, oro:install invocation, --consumers default, isolation gaps
• references/v7.0.md — 7.1-dev deltas: PHP 8.1+, Alice (unique) deprecation, formal tag-aware mocking, ChromeDriver pinning