Behat (software) (original) (raw)

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Developer Konstantin Kudryashov
Initial release 8 September 2010; 15 years ago (2010-09-08)[1]
Stable release 3.24.0 / 11 September 2025; 35 days ago (2025-09-11)[1]
Repository github.com/Behat/Behat Edit this at Wikidata
Written in PHP
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Behavior-driven development
License MIT License
Website behat.org

Behat is a test framework for behavior-driven development written in the PHP programming language. Behat was created by Konstantin Kudryashov and its development is hosted on GitHub.

Behat is intended to aid communication between developers, clients and other stakeholders during a software development process. It allows the clear documentation of testable examples of the software's intended behaviour. Behat test scenarios are written with Gherkin,[2] a business-readable domain-specific language following defined patterns.

Tests can be run at any point new code is introduced into a codebase to confirm no regressions within the existing test coverage are introduced. It can be used to directly test php code and is often used with Selenium to remote control browsers as part of the scenarios. The browsers under remote control can take videos[3] or screenshots of failures. Using selenium or tools like selenoid[4] a "grid" of browsers can be remote controlled for parallel test execution. There is also a module for running php only scenarios.[5]

Like other BDD frameworks, Behat scenarios are a series of Given, When, and Then steps that explain a business case. The definition of these steps exist within method annotations of a class that extends the BehatContext.[6]

Behat can output test results in a number of different formats, including JUnit XML and HTML[7]

The preconditions after "Given" correspond to the PHP method name to execute:

Feature: Simple description of this feature’s story

Describe benefit, role and feature or user story Use as many lines as needed

Background: Given some step run for all scenarios

Scenario: Scenario or example description Given I setup preconditions with: | data column 1 | data column 2 | | alice | bob | When I press the "blue" button Then the result is: """ A multiple line string of data """

#comments can be added as needed

Scenario Outline: Scenario or example description Given I setup config with "" When I push button "" Then "" happens Examples: | setting | button | result | | a | red | there is a beep | | b | blue | there is no beep |

  1. ^ a b "Behat/CHANGELOG.md at master · Behat/Behat". github.com. Retrieved 2021-03-27.
  2. ^ "Cucumber Common Components". GitHub. 14 November 2021.
  3. ^ {{[cite web](/wiki/Template:Cite%5Fweb "Template:Cite web")}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ aerokube/selenoid, Aerokube, 2024-02-17, retrieved 2024-02-19
  5. ^ Marynicz, Daniel (2023-11-17), Daniel-Marynicz/BehatParallelExtension, retrieved 2024-02-19
  6. ^ BDD With Behat - Tuts+ Code Tutorial. Code.tutsplus.com (2013-12-23). Retrieved on 2015-03-19.
  7. ^ Vanmeert, Neal (2024-01-24), dutchiexl/BehatHtmlFormatterPlugin, retrieved 2024-02-19