How to use dynamic urls in acceptance tests from command line with Codeception

Question

I have two php envs and I am currently able to run something like this for different urls

modules:
    enabled:
        - WebDriver
        - AcceptanceHelper
    config:
        WebDriver:
            url: 'http://localhost/'
            browser: 'phantomjs'
env:
    alpha:
         modules:
            config:
                WebDriver:
                    url: 'http://myalphasite/'
    beta:
         modules:
            config:
                WebDriver:
                    url: 'http://mybetasite/'

Currently I run them using commands codecept run --env alpha , or codecept run --env beta

Is there a way to provide the url from commandline while running the codeception tests , something like codecept run site=alpha.test.com and then grabbing it from inside the config instead of hardcoding urls ?

What is the reason to not hardcode URLs? I see some cases when changing the URLs dynamically can be helpful, e.g. different environments in the same server, in that case you can use a separate configuration files placed in the directory specified by envs option in paths configuration, see: http://codeception.com/docs/07-AdvancedUsage#Environments. What is your case? — Mauricio Sánchez, Jul 01 '15 at 13:42
we have different dev environments for each developer, and every time I add a new dev and env, I dont want to change the config file — Supra, Jul 01 '15 at 14:55
@Supra did you ever come across a good solution for this? I have a similar situation where our build pipeline produces an artifact like `my-application-4.26.phar` which would need to be passed to codecept as an argument. — Josh Johnson, Apr 17 '17 at 17:11
@JoshJohnson Not yet unfortunately. Try setting it somewhere in the env variable, not sure if it would work though. worth a try. — Supra, Apr 20 '17 at 08:25
@Supra ended up using envs (like you did) with a custom loader that we can pass `commandLocation: 'php my-application-1.*.phar'` — Josh Johnson, Apr 25 '17 at 18:16

Gizzmo · Answer 1 · 2015-10-28T08:13:47.880

i had the same Problem and did extend Codeception to support a dynamic Server-Url.

I can call my Codeceptions-Test by php in addition by the following code:

chdir('myPathTo: tests/codeception');
$codeception = new \Wrapper\Codecept([
    'steps' => true,
    'verbosity' => 1,
    // some other options (see Codeception docs/sources)
]);
$codeception->setBaseUrl('myServerUrl');
$codeception->run('myTestSuiteName');

Here is the extension i did in Codeception:

<?php

namespace Wrapper;

use Codeception\Codecept as CodeceptOriginal;

class Codecept extends CodeceptOriginal {

    private $baseUrl = null;

    public function runSuite($settings, $suite, $test = null) {
        if ($settings['modules']['enabled']) {
            foreach ($settings['modules']['enabled'] as $key => $module) {
                if (is_array($module) && $module['PhpBrowser']['url']) {
                    $module['PhpBrowser']['url'] = $this->getBaseUrl();
                    $settings['modules']['enabled'][$key] = $module;
                }
            }
        }
        return parent::runSuite($settings, $suite, $test = null);
    }

    public function getBaseUrl() {
        return $this->baseUrl;
    }

    public function setBaseUrl($baseUrl) {
        $this->baseUrl = $baseUrl;
        return $this;
    }

}

In your case you need some additional programming to get all cli option into codecpetion (//see some other options).

OR

You can extend the Codecption cli interface to instantiate the Wrapper/Codecept and not the original Codecept.

Hope this helps a bit and gives you an idea how to fix your issue.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 15 '16 at 12:35

Codeception documentation says configuration can be merged.

codecept run --env alpha,beta

You can create custom config file with dynamic domain as you need. And override it with --env parameter.

E.g. file beta.yml is created dynamically with this content:

modules:
    config:
        WebDriver:
            url: http://dynamic-domain-1.mysite.com

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 01 '16 at 14:42

In the bootstrap file it is possible to access and more importantly modify the loaded configuration by accessing static::$config. The bootstrap file is processed as one of the last steps when loading the configuration file.

self::$config['modules']['config']['WebDriver']['url'] = $url;

Where $url has been determined by other means e.g. environment variable, or it could come from the global argv if you are prepared to parse the command line data yourself.

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 09 '16 at 08:18

If you want to set webdriver's url within php, you can add the following line to your tests/_bootstrap.php file and remove the url param from your tests/acceptance.suite.yml file.

\Codeception\Configuration::append(['modules' => ['enabled' => [['WebDriver' => ['url' => 'http://YOUR-URL.COM']]]]]);

Here is an example, how to set the url from a laravel .env file.

require __DIR__ . '/../bootstrap/autoload.php';
$app = require __DIR__ . '/../bootstrap/app.php';
$app->instance('request', new \Illuminate\Http\Request);
$app->make('Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel')->bootstrap();

\Codeception\Configuration::append(['modules' => ['enabled' => [['WebDriver' => ['url' => env('APP_URL')]]]]]);

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 29 '16 at 09:08

I am doing this:

I have few --env cofiguration, for example:

DevChrome.yml, DevPhantom.yml, DevFirefox.yml, NormalChrome.yml, NormalPhantom.yml, NormalFirefox.yml

and if I need to test a different stage from the programmer, I use this command before I run test:

sed -i 's|https://old.domain.com/|https://new.domain.com/|g' tests/_envs/DevChrome.yml

I run test from Jenkins and I have saved tests in GitHub.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 31 '22 at 14:47

Referring to this question, you could put the url into a .env file or the environment. Then, you declare that you're using them using the params tag so they can be referenced elsewhere.

params:
    - .env

modules:
    enabled:
        - WebDriver
        - AcceptanceHelper
    config:
        WebDriver:
            url: '%URL%' # declared in the .env file
            browser: 'phantomjs'

Before you use this, it is worth noting that you will probably have to do some futzing to get it to work, but this should be a valid alternative to the other answers.

How to use dynamic urls in acceptance tests from command line with Codeception

6 Answers6