Behat testing at Catalyst
Performing repetitive tasks in order to test a final product is definitely not one of the most exciting activities and therefore, can be quite tedious and prone to error. When it comes to testing the functionality of your site, we look at automation as the best way to increase the performance, efficiency and coverage of software testing while saving valuable time and money.
Behat is Catalyst’s choice when it comes to automation testing, a tool which makes behaviour-driven development (BDD) possible. The syntax, called Gherkin, is probably the most appealing part of Behat as a solution. It allows us to write and assemble human-readable test suites and stories which describe the behaviour of your application and can be presented and understood by anyone, whether they are a programmer, a project manager or a client. Additionally, any new functionality or plugins you attach can be automated further through Behat’s ability to add new testing steps derived from code written by developers.
What parts of your web application should you aim for when using Behat?
Tests in Behat, called scenarios are written in feature files (with a .feature extension) and should target anything from high risk functionality and business critical tests to repetitive functionality and time-consuming/complicated tasks.
We can therefore see a multitude of possible applications and benefits to including automation and Behat in our development workflow. You will be able to repeatedly run your tests as many times as you want without the hassle of manually clicking around the website and with the confidence that Behat will let you know immediately if anything goes wrong.
