behat

behat [options] [featurefile_]

behat is a BDD (Behavior-Driven Development) framework for PHP that tests business expectations using human-readable scenarios. It is the PHP implementation of Cucumber, using Gherkin syntax to define test scenarios.Behat allows teams to describe application behavior in plain language that developers, QA, and stakeholders can all understand. Scenarios are written in feature files and executed against step definitions implemented in PHP.

--init

Initialize a new Behat project with the necessary directory structure

Run only scenarios with matching tags (e.g., @smoke, @regression)

Run only feature elements whose name matches the given string or regex

Output formatter: pretty (default), progress, junit

Write output to a file or directory

Generate step definition snippets for undefined steps

Append generated snippets to context files

Increase verbosity of output

Force colored or non-colored output

Run only the specified test suite

Use a specific configuration profile

Use a specific configuration file (default: behat.yml or behat.yml.dist)

Invoke formatters without actually executing tests or hooks

Stop processing on the first failed scenario

Re-run only the scenarios that failed in the previous run

Fail the run unless every test explicitly passes (treat undefined/pending as failures)

Current Behat 3.x requires PHP 8.2 or higher (older 3.x releases ran on PHP 5.3.1+). Feature files must use Gherkin syntax with proper indentation. Step definitions must be unique; duplicate definitions cause ambiguity errors. The default context file is FeatureContext.php in features/bootstrap/.

Behat was created by Konstantin Kudryashov (everzet) in 2010 as the PHP port of Cucumber. It became the de facto BDD testing framework for PHP, widely adopted in the Symfony and Drupal communities for acceptance testing.

phpunit(1), phpspec(1), cucumber(1), composer(1), php(1)

Source code · Documentation