Customization

In this chapter we will explain how you can extend and customize file structure and test execution routines.

One Runner for Multiple Applications

In case your project consists of several applications (frontend, admin, api) or you use Symfony framework with its bundles, you may be interested in having all tests for all applications (bundles) to be executed in one runner. In this case you will get one report that covers the whole project.

Place codeception.yml file into root folder of your project and specify paths to other codeception.yml configs you want to include.

include:
  - frontend/src/*Bundle
  - admin
  - api/rest
paths:
  log: log
settings:
  colors: false

You should also specify path to log directory, where the reports and logs will be stored.

Namespaces

To avoid naming conflicts between Actor classes and Helper classes, they should be added into namespaces. To create test suites with namespaces you can add --namespace option to bootstrap command.

php codecept bootstrap --namespace frontend

This will bootstrap a new project with namespace: frontend parameter in codeception.yml file. Helpers will be in frontend\Codeception\Module namespace and Actor classes will be in frontend namespace. Thus, newly generated tests will look like this:

<?php use frontend\AcceptanceTester;
$I = new AcceptanceTester($scenario);
//...

Once each of your applications (bundles) has its own namespace and different Helper or Actor classes, you can execute all tests in one runner. Run codeception tests as usual, using meta-config we created earlier:

php codecept run

This will launch test suites for all 3 applications and merge the reports from all of them. Basically that would be very useful when you run your tests on Continuous Integration server and you want to get one report in JUnit and HTML format. Codecoverage report will be merged too.

If your applications uses same helpers, follow the next section of this chapter.

Extension

Codeception has limited capabilities to extend its core features. Extensions are not supposed to override current functionality, but are pretty useful if you are experienced developer and you want to hook into testing flow.

By default, one RunFailed Extension is already enabled in your global codeception.yml. It allows you to rerun failed tests with -g failed option:

php codecept run -g failed

Codeception comes with bundled extensions located in ext directory. For instance, you can enable Logger extension to log test execution with Monolog

extensions:
    enabled:
        - Codeception\Extension\RunFailed # default extension
        - Codeception\Extension\Logger # enabled extension
    config:
        Codeception\Extension\Logger:
            max_files: 5 # logger configuration

But what are extensions, anyway? Basically speaking, Extensions are nothing more then event listeners based on Symfony Event Dispatcher component.

Here are the events and event classes. The events are listed in order they happen during execution. Each event has a corresponding class, which is passed to listener, and contains specific objects.

Events

There may be a confusion between test.start/test.before and test.after/test.end. Start/end events are triggered by PHPUnit itself. But before/after events are triggered by Codeception. Thus, when you have classical PHPUnit test (extended from PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase), before/after events won't be triggered for them. On test.before event you can mark test as skipped or incomplete, which is not possible in test.start. You can learn more from Codeception internal event listeners.

The extension class itself is inherited from Codeception\Extension.

<?php
class MyCustomExtension extends \Codeception\Extension
{
    // list events to listen to
    public static $events = array(
        'suite.after' => 'afterSuite',
        'test.before' => 'beforeTest',
        'step.before' => 'beforeStep',
        'test.fail' => 'testFailed',
        'result.print.after' => 'print',
    );

    // methods that handle events

    public function afterSuite(\Codeception\Event\SuiteEvent $e) {}

    public function beforeTest(\Codeception\Event\TestEvent $e) {}

    public function beforeStep(\Codeception\Event\StepEvent $e) {}

    public function testFailed(\Codeception\Event\FailEvent $e) {}

    public function print(\Codeception\Event\PrintResultEvent $e) {}
}

By implementing event handling methods you can listen to event and even update passed objects. Extensions have some basic methods you can use:

• write - prints to screen
• writeln - prints to screen with line end char at the end
• getModule - allows you to access a module
• hasModule - checks if module is enabled
• getModuleNames - list all enabled modules
• _reconfigure - can be implemented instead of overriding constructor.

Enabling Extension

Once you've implemented a simple extension class, you can require it in tests/_bootstrap.php, load with Composer's autoloader defined in composer.json, or store class inside tests/_supportdir.

Then you can enable it in codeception.yml:

extensions:
    enabled: [MyCustomExtension]

Configuring Extension

In extension you can access currently passed options via options property. You also can access global config via \Codeception\Configuration::config() method. But if you want to have custom options for your extension, you can pass them in codeception.yml file:

extensions:
    enabled: [MyCustomExtension]
    config:
        MyCustomExtension:
            param: value

Passed configuration is accessible via config property: $this->config['param'].

Check out a very basic extension Notifier.

Custom Commands

You can add your own commands to codeception.

Your custom commands have to implement the interface Codeception\CustomCommandInterface, because there has to be a function to get the name of the command.

You have to register your command in the file codeception.yml

extensions:
    commands: [Project\Command\MyCustomCommand]

If you want to activate the Command globally, because you use more then one codeception.yml file, then you have to register your command in codeception.dist.yml in the root folder of your project.

Please see a complete example

Group Objects

Group Objects are extensions listening to events of a tests belonging to a specific group. When a test is added to a group:

<?php 
$scenario->group('admin');
$I = new AcceptanceTester($scenario);

This test will trigger events:

• test.before.admin
• step.before.admin
• step.after.admin
• test.success.admin
• test.fail.admin
• test.after.admin

A group object is built to listen to these events. It is pretty useful when additional setup is required for some of your tests. Let's say you want to load fixtures for tests that belong to admin group:

<?php
namespace Group;

class Admin extends \Codeception\GroupObject
{
    public static $group = 'admin';

    public function _before(\Codeception\Event\TestEvent $e)
    {
        $this->writeln('inserting additional admin users...');

        $db = $this->getModule('Db');
        $db->haveInDatabase('users', array('name' => 'bill', 'role' => 'admin'));
        $db->haveInDatabase('users', array('name' => 'john', 'role' => 'admin'));
        $db->haveInDatabase('users', array('name' => 'mark', 'role' => 'banned'));
    }

    public function _after(\Codeception\Event\TestEvent $e)
    {
        $this->writeln('cleaning up admin users...');
        // ...
    }
}

A group class can be created with php codecept generate:group groupname command. Group class will be stored in tests/_support/Group directory.

A group class can be enabled just like you enable extension class. In file codeception.yml:

extensions:
    enabled: [Group\Admin]

Now Admin group class will listen to all events of tests that belong to the admin group.

Custom Reporters

In order to customize output you can use Extensions, as it is done in SimpleOutput Extension. But what if you need to change output format of XML or JSON results triggered with --xml or --json options? Codeception uses printers from PHPUnit and overrides some of them. If you need to customize one of standard reporters you can override them too. If you are thinking on implementing your own reporter you should add reporters section to codeception.yml and override one of standard printer classes to your own:

reporters: 
    xml: Codeception\PHPUnit\Log\JUnit
    html: Codeception\PHPUnit\ResultPrinter\HTML
    tap: PHPUnit_Util_Log_TAP
    json: PHPUnit_Util_Log_JSON
    report: Codeception\PHPUnit\ResultPrinter\Report

All reporters implement PHPUnit_Framework_TestListener interface. It is recommended to read the code of original reporter before overriding it.

Conclusion

Each feature mentioned above may dramatically help when using Codeception to automate testing of large projects, although some features may require advanced knowledge of PHP. There is no "best practice" or "use cases" when we talk about groups, extensions, or other powerful features of Codeception. If you see you have a problem that can be solved using these extensions, then give them a try.