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Behat vs Selenium comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Behat and Selenium?

Behat

https://docs.behat.org/en/latest/

Selenium

https://pypi.org/project/selenium/
Programming language

PHP

Python

Category

Functional/Acceptance Testing

Web Automation

General info

Behat is an open source Behavior-Driven Development framework for PHP.

Behat uses the StoryBDD subtype of behaviour-driven development (the other subtype is SpecBDD); This means the tests we write with Behat look rather like stories than code. It is inspired by Ruby's Cucumber

Selenium is an open source tool used to test web applications

Selenium is a powerful testing tool which can send standard Python commands to different browsers, despite variations in browser design. It also provides extensions to emulate user interaction with browsers, a distribution server for scaling browser allocation, and the infrastructure for implementations of the W3C WebDriver specification that lets you write interchangeable code for all major web browsers
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

No

Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

To enable Behat to test a website, you need to add Mink and a browser emulator (selenium maybe, though slow) to the mix. Mink methods are the connector between Behat and an extensive list of available drivers, and they provide a consistent testing API.

Yes

It is primarily a browser automation tool which tests front-end components and functionality
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Behat can be used for Data Integrity Testing to verify that database operations are functioning properly

Yes

It can perform Unit tests and can test various components and behaviours in the backend using a BDD or TDD approach
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

One can use the 'Doctrinefixturesbundle' to create the required fixture loaders and load them in our Behat scenarios when required, using the 'BeforeScenario' hook.

Yes

By writing your Selenium WebDriver tests in PyTest, this gives you access to Pytest's powerful fixture model
Group fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data for a group of tests (group-fixtures). This ensures specific environment for a given group of tests.

Yes

Behat allows for group fixtures

Yes

One can group fixtures if accessing Pytest's fixture model
Generators
Supports data generators for tests. Data generators generate input data for test. The test is then run for each input data produced in this way.

By use of third party libraries like moodle-behat-generators

Yes

By using a library such as Faker or Fake-factory
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

MIT License

Apache License 2.0

Mocks
Mocks are objects that simulate the behavior of real objects. Using mocks allows testing some part of the code in isolation (with other parts mocked when needed)

By using third party libraries like Mock and Prophecy

Yes

It includes support for mocking
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

You can use tags to group features and scenarios together, independent of your file and directory structure

Yes

By using the TestNG feature with which we can create groups and maintain them easily
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework