Selenium with Behat

Your guide to run Selenium Webdriver tests with Behat on BrowserStack.

Introduction

BrowserStack gives you instant access to our Selenium Grid of 3000+ real devices and desktop browsers. Running your Selenium tests with Behat on BrowserStack is simple. This guide will help you:

1. Run your first test
2. Mark tests as passed or failed
3. Debug your app

Prerequisites

• You need to have BrowserStack Username and Access key, which you can find in your account settings. If you have not created an account yet, you can sign up for a Free Trial or purchase a plan.
• Before you can start running your Selenium tests with Behat, ensure you have the Behat libraries installed:

# Install using composer

php composer.phar install behat/behat

Run your first test

To understand how to integrate with BrowserStack, we will look at two things:

1. A sample test case written in Behat with PHP
2. Integration of this sample test case with BrowserStack

Sample test case

The sample Behat test case below searches for the string “BrowserStack” on Google, and checks if the title of the resulting page is “BrowserStack - Google Search”

// Google Feature
Feature: Google Search Functionality

Scenario: Can find search results
    Given I am on "https://www.google.com/ncr"
    When I search for "BrowserStack"
    Then I get title as "BrowserStack - Google Search"

// Feature Context
<?php

class FeatureContext extends BrowserStackContext {
  /** @Given /^I am on "([^"]*)"$/ */
  public function iAmOnSite($url) {
    self::$driver->get($url);
  }

  /** @When /^I search for "([^"]*)"$/ */
  public function iSearchFor($searchText) {
    $element = self::$driver->findElement(WebDriverBy::name("q"));
    $element->sendKeys($searchText);
    $element->submit();
    sleep(5);
  }

  /** @Then /^I get title as "([^"]*)"$/ */
  public function iShouldGet($string) {
    $title = self::$driver->getTitle();
    if ((string)  $string !== $title) {
      throw new Exception("Expected title: '". $string. "'' Actual is: '". $title. "'");
    }
  }
}

Once we have defined the test case, we are ready to integrate this Behat test case into BrowserStack.

Integrating with BrowserStack

We can now integrate our Behat test case into BrowserStack. Integration of Behat with BrowserStack is made possible by use of following module:

class BrowserStackContext extends Behat\Behat\Context\BehatContext
{
    protected $CONFIG;
    protected static $driver;
    private static $bs_local;

    public function __construct($parameters){
        $GLOBALS['CONFIG'] = $parameters["browserstack"];

        $GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME'] = getenv('BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME');
        if(!$GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME']) $GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME'] = $GLOBALS['CONFIG']['user'];

        $GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY'] = getenv('BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY');
        if(!$GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY']) $GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY'] = $GLOBALS['CONFIG']['key'];
    }

    /** @BeforeFeature */
    public static function setup()
    {
        $CONFIG = $GLOBALS['CONFIG'];
        $task_id = getenv('TASK_ID') ? getenv('TASK_ID') : 0;

        $url = "https://" . $GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME'] . ":" . $GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY'] . "@" . $CONFIG['server'] ."/wd/hub";
        $caps = $CONFIG['environments'][$task_id];

        foreach ($CONFIG["capabilities"] as $key => $value) {
            if(!array_key_exists($key, $caps))
                $caps[$key] = $value;
        }

        if(array_key_exists("browserstack.local", $caps) && $caps["browserstack.local"])
        {
            $bs_local_args = array("key" => $GLOBALS['BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY']);
            self::$bs_local = new BrowserStack\Local();
            self::$bs_local->start($bs_local_args);
        }

        self::$driver = RemoteWebDriver::create($url, $caps);
    }

    /** @AfterFeature */
    public static function tearDown()
    {
        self::$driver->quit();
        if(self::$bs_local) self::$bs_local->stop();
    }
}

The module reads from config file where you need to put the BrowserStack Hub URL and credentials.

default: 
    autoload:
        '': '%paths.base%/../features/bootstrap'
    suites:
        default:
            paths: ['../features/single']
            contexts:
                - FeatureContext:
                    parameters:
                        server: "hub-cloud.browserstack.com"
                        user: "BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME"
                        key: "BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY"

                        capabilities:
                            build: "behat-browserstack"
                            name: "parallel_test"
                            "browserstack.debug": true

                        environments:
                        •
                            browser: "Chrome"
                            browser_version: "latest"

                        •
                            browser: "Firefox"
                            os: "Windows"

                        •
                            browser: "Safari"
                            os: "OS X"

                        •
                            browser: "Internet explorer"
                            os: "Windows"

We are now ready to run the test on BrowserStack, using the following command:

# Run using composer

composer parallel

Mark tests as passed or failed

BrowserStack provides a comprehensive REST API to access and update information about your tests. Shown below is a sample code snippet which allows you to mark your tests as passed or failed based on the assertions in your Behat test cases.

file_get_contents('https://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_ACCESS_KEY@api.browserstack.com/automate/sessions/<session-id>.json', false, stream_context_create(array('http'=>array('method'=>'PUT','header'=>'Content-type: application/json', 'content'=>'{"status":"passed","reason":""}'))));

The two potential values for status can either be completed or error. Optionally, a reason can also be passed. You can find the full reference to our REST API.

Debug your app

BrowserStack provides a range of debugging tools to help you quickly identify and fix bugs you discover through your automated tests.

• Text Logs

Text Logs are a comprehensive record of your test. They are used to identify all the steps executed in the test and troubleshoot errors for the failed step. Text Logs are accessible from the Automate dashboard or via our REST API.

• Visual Logs

Visual Logs automatically capture the screenshots generated at every Selenium command run through your PHP script. Visual logs help with debugging the exact step and the page where failure occurred. They also help identify any layout or design related issues with your web pages on different browsers.

Visual Logs are disabled by default. In order to enable Visual Logs you will need to set browserstack.debug capability to true:

$caps = array(
 "browserstack.debug" => "true"
);

• Video Recording

Every test run on the BrowserStack Selenium grid is recorded exactly as it is executed on our remote machine. This feature is particularly helpful whenever a browser test fails. You can access videos from Automate Dashboard for each session. You can also download the videos from the Dashboard or retrieve a link to download the video using our REST API.

Note: Video recording increases test execution time slightly. You can disable this feature by setting the browserstack.video capability to false.

$caps = array(
 "browserstack.video" => "false"
);

In addition to these logs BrowserStack also provides Raw logs, Network logs, Console logs, Selenium logs, Appium logs and Interactive session. You can find the complete details to enable all the debugging options.