Browser Automated Tests for Joomla! CMS

Abstract

System development nowadays more than ever starts to look for automated test methods. There are several main drivers for this trend,

Need for faster design‐develop‐test‐analysis cycle
Push for higher quality
Increasing complexity of systems and their integration and last but not least
Ever‐rising costs of manual testing

Automation Testing means using an automation tool to execute test case suite. The automation software can also enter test data into the System Under Test, compare expected and actual results and generate detailed test reports.

Test Automation demands considerable investments of money and resources. Successive development cycles will require execution of same test suite repeatedly. Using a test automation tool it's possible to record this test suite and re-play it as required. Once the test suite is automated, no human intervention is required. BDD Testing with Gherkin and Codeception What is Gherkin – BDD Language?

Gherkin is a human-readable language for system behaviour description.
Gherkin is a natural language for testing that Codeception uses to define test cases.
The test is written in plain English which is common to all the domains of project team.
Test cases were designed to be non-technical and human readable, and collectively describes.
This test is structured that makes it capable of being read in an automated way.
Gherkin file have a .feature extention.

Benefits of Gherkin? Main Keywords In Gherkin

Feature
Scenario
Given, When, Then, And, But (Steps)
Background
Scenario outline
Examples

Example

Create a .feature using command tests/vendor/bin/codecept generate:feature acceptance content

File content.feature contains,

Feature: content In order to manage content article in the web As an owner I need to create modify trash publish and Unpublish content article

Background: Given Joomla CMS is installed When Login into Joomla administrator with username "admin" and password "admin" Then I see administrator dashboard

Scenario: Create an Article Given There is a add content link When I create new content with field title as "My_Article" and content as a "This is my first article" And I save an article Then I should see the "Article successfully saved." message

Generate snippets of .featuer file using command tests/vendor/bin/codecept gherkin:snippets acceptance

/** * @Given There is a add content link */ public function thereIsAAddContentLink() { throw new \Codeception\Exception\Incomplete("Step There is a add content link is not defined"); }

/**
 * @When I create new content with field title as :arg1 and content as a :arg2
 */
 public function iCreateNewContentWithFieldTitleAsAndContentAsA($arg1, $arg2)
 {
    throw new \Codeception\Exception\Incomplete("Step `I create new content with field title as :arg1 and content as a :arg2` is not defined");
 }

/**
 * @When I save an article
 */
 public function iSaveAnArticle()
 {
    throw new \Codeception\Exception\Incomplete("Step `I save an article` is not defined");
 }

Copy the all snippets and put in stepobject file

Create a stepobject file using command tests/vendor/bin/codecept generate:stepobject acceptance Administrator/content

Define your step file path in acceptance.suit.yml file

For Example - Step\Acceptance\Administrator\Content Installation

Clone this repository using command below or download source from here

$ git clone [email protected]:joomla-projects/gsoc16_browser-automated-tests.git

Install composer in your system. Read more about how to install composer here.

Install composer packages using following steps from root directory of this project. We are using composer.json file for tests folder, so that you will have to run composer install from tests directory.

$ cd tests && composer install

Copy tests/acceptance.suite.dist.yml to tests/acceptance.suite.yml and change settings according to your webserver.

$ cp acceptance.suite.dist.yml acceptance.suite.yml

Get back to project root direcoty using $ cd ..

Run tests

To run the tests please execute the following commands. We are using Robo.li to execute PhpUnit based Codeception test suits. To execute all the test features you should use.

$ tests/vendor/bin/robo run:tests

You can individual run feature using following command.

$ tests/vendor/bin/robo run:test

Or you can manually run them using codecept command. Check the following example:

$ tests/vendor/bin/codecept run tests/acceptance/users.feature

If you want to see steps then you can use --steps option of codeception. Check full codecept command list here

Note:You can modify the timeout time by setting the value of TIMEOUT constant lower for fast machines and higher for slow computers. The constant located in the file tests/acceptance/_bootstrap.php