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

PHPUnit

https://phpunit.de/

Behat

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

PHP

PHP

Category

Unit Testing

Functional/Acceptance Testing

General info

PHPUnit is a unit testing framework for the PHP programming language

PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented testing framework and is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks.

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
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

Yes

It's an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks

No

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

Yes

It can perform Unit tests and can test various front-end components and behaviours

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.
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

By performing unit tests on singular back-end components

Yes

Behat can be used for Data Integrity Testing to verify that database operations are functioning properly
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

By use of a setup code. The setup code consists of two Important template functions, the 'setUp()' function (called to create the objects to be tested) and 'tearDown()' function (called to cleanup the objects which you tested)

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.
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

It does support group fixtures

Yes

Behat allows for group fixtures
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.

N/A

By use of third party libraries like moodle-behat-generators
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

MIT License

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)

Yes

One of its main features is that PHPUnit comes with out of the box support for Mock objects

By using third party libraries like Mock and Prophecy
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

It allows grouping of tests and by using the @group annotation one can tag a test to belong to one or more groups

Yes

You can use tags to group features and scenarios together, independent of your file and directory structure
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework