Implement a basic user management

[evangelion1204]

Many pages need user data e.g.login or register.

It should be possible to specify users in the behat.yml and use this saved data to fill forms or write custom steps:

default:
    QATools\BehatExtension:
      users:
        registered:
          firstname: michael
          lastname: geppert

public function fillLoginForm()
{
    $user = $this->getUser('registered');
    $this->loginForm->fill($user->getData());
}

public function enterFirstname()
{
    $user = $this->getUser('registered');
    $this->firstname->setValue($user->get('firstname'));
}

Normally only one user is active at time. Therefore extend the whole feature with an active user and specific steps to load him.

For example:

Scenario: A basic registration of an user
    Given "valid" as user

[aik099]

Considering that in Behat (in contrast to PHPUnit) you only have scenario + featurecontext + config, then the only place to emulate data sets would be config.

Dirty, but I don't see other options yet. You can define csv file and parse it to get desired users I guess.

[evangelion1204]

I currently use a php config for users and addresses. It would also possible to just specify a path for an additional config file where those information are loaded.

[aik099]

That sounds more like a Behat feature, not the QA-Tools extension. But anyway we start it here and then push as PR to Behat itself.

[evangelion1204]

I think extensions capable of solving things like this. We have our own context and can provide more functions.
It would maybe be a good idea to move this feature to QA-Tools itself. This is maybe something which is needed quite often. We could also connect this with Form in the future.

[aik099]

Ability to separate data, used in tests from test code is something that test framework does. For example PHPUnit can do this. I don't know why this isn't implemented in Behat.

If you need these users only for single scenario, then TableNode ( http://blog.whiteoctober.co.uk/2012/09/12/behat-tablenodes-the-missing-manual/ ) might solve that. Maybe these table nodes can be moved in config and included in scenarios somehow as well.

[aik099]

Also @stof has suggested a solution on Twitter: http://behat.readthedocs.org/en/latest/guides/1.gherkin.html#scenario-outlines

[aik099]

Actually these Scenario Outlines complete eliminate the need to this task.

[evangelion1204]

I already read those a while ago, sure this can be used but I don't think that they are suiteable.

As a programmer they might be ok but normally tests will look like this:

Scenario: A basic login
  Given a registered user
  When the user fills the login form
  And clicks login
  Then the user will be on the account page

or

Scenario: A basic login which fails
  Given a non registered user
  When the user fills the login form
  And clicks login
  Then the user will be on the login page

This is how I have seen tests with Gherkin and Cucumber but maybe they were just bad examples for some sort of tests, yet I know that business guys wants to read those tests and understand whats happening.

Tests should also work as stand alone. The project I write tests for I need to login every time. Which results in repeating myself again and again, you could use http://docs.behat.org/guides/1.gherkin.html#backgrounds to repeat less but after all I want also to split my tests in separate files like:

• login
• register
• catalog
• product detail page
• checkout
  Also I don't want to write such data in the feature files, cause those will change in every test run. I might want to increment the used email address example_user_20140707_1@domain.tld ...

Maybe there are solutions with Behat which I currently not know or not aware of.

In general those outlines are the same as data providers in PHPUnit and they work great for unit tests, but maybe not for such global data as users or addresses, which I will also change depending on my country. In that case I could just load a different config.

[aik099]

I think, that at least if we're talking about users, the role concept, introduced in Behat 3.0 might be used. You write scenario as usual (one extra step As an ...), but then run it against a registered user role. http://behat.readthedocs.org/en/latest/guides/5.suites.html?highlight=role

And with tests split into several files having central user registry is pain, even in PHPUnit.

[evangelion1204]

Ok, I will take a closer look at this new Role feature, maybe it covers everything.

[evangelion1204]

And with tests split into several files having central user registry is pain, even in PHPUnit.

For a normal unit test this is right, but I don't agree for system Selenium tests or maybe I did not stumble over any problem so far. Yes some centralised registry is not the best solution in many cases.

[aik099]

This is Twitter thread that might be of interest: https://twitter.com/aik099/status/486125097024258049