Published on December 18, 2019

We are finally here!

Codeception 4.0 is released and this means a lot for us!

After long months on splitting core into modules, publishing new packages and setting up build pipelines, we are proud to show you the result.

As you know - Codeception 4 changes the way it is installed. From now on, Codeception package won’t include any modules by default and you will need to install them manually. This can be a bit annoying at first but in the end, this will allow you to upgrade each package individually and not relying on the core.

In Codeception 4 we also added support for Symfony 5, so if you plan to use the latest Symfony components - you need to upgrade today.

Upgrade to Codeception 4

To start upgrading to Codeception 4 bump a version in composer.json and run composer update .

"codeception/codeception": "^4.0"

To simplify the upgrading process we introduced an upgrade script which will go through your config file and scan for all included modules. Corresponding packages will be added to composer.json, so you could install all Codeception modules you need.

Run upgrade script on current project:

php vendor/bin/codecept init upgrade4

The script will upgrade your composer.json file and it is recommended to run composer update immediately, so new modules will be installed.

If you use several Codeception configs for multiple bundles you will need to execute upgrade script for each of them:

php vendor/bin/codecept init upgrade4 -c src/app/frontend/

Congratulations! An upgrade is done. Now you will be able to use each module individually.

Thanks to Gintautas Miselis @Naktibalda for splitting the core and adding Symfony 5 support

Phar Distribution

Codeception 4.0 will provide two phar files with selected modules included. One file will target PHP 7.2+ and include Symfony 4.4, PHPUnit 8 and newer versions of other libraries. Another file will target PHP 5.6 - 7.1 and include Symfony 3.4 and PHPUnit 5.7.

Target audience of phar files is acceptance testers, so framework modules won’t be included. Here is the full list of bundled modules:

Amqp

Apc

Asserts

Cli

Db

FileSystem

FTP

Memcache

Mongodb

PhpBrowser

Queue

Redis

Rest

Sequence

Soap

Webdriver

Phar files will no longer be built on release of codeception/codeception, but on more ad-hoc basis either monthly or after important changes to core or some bundled module.

What’s new in 4.0

Since 4.0 our longread changelogs are gone. So to track changes in modules you will need to go to corresponding repositories and read changelogs. For instance, here is the changelog for Db module.

However, we will still publish changelogs for core changes here. And one of the most interesting features coming to Codeception 4 is command stashing in interactive pause.

Codeception 3.0 introduced interactive pause for better writing and debugging tests. By adding $I->pause() to your tests you could try all Codeception commands while a test will be interrupted. This helps for browser testing and framework testing, so you could try commands in action before leaving a test.

In Codeception 4.0 this instrument was improved so you could automatically stash all successful commands:

Use hotkeys to save successful commands into a file. So you no longer need to keep in mind which commands you need to take into your test. Just copy all successful commands and paste them into a test.

Stashing was brought to you by Poh Nean

Thank you for using Codeception, and thank you for staying with us these years. It is December 2019, so it means that Codeception turns 8. Through these years we reached 15Mln installations on Packagist, we are used in some well-known companies and we became a valuable part of PHP ecosystem.

We accept congratulations in Twitter or on OpenCollective. If your business gets some value from Codeception it is ok to support its maintainers. Especially, today, when we have to maintain not one repository but 32! So, if possible, talk to your boss and ask for sponsoring Codeception. This means a lot to us, Codeception Team, and it will motivate us to work more on Codeception.

We say “thank you” to all our current and previous sponsors:

Thanks to ThemeIsle for becoming our first regular financial contributor

for becoming our first regular financial contributor Thanks to Sami Greenbury, Lars Moelleken, Dan Untenzu for investing their own money into open-source

Thanks to Rebilly and 2Amigos who fully supported the development since 2013 till 2016

Thanks to Seravo for sponsoring Codeception 3.0 release.

That’s all. Upgrade to Codeception 4 and improve your testing!