The SitePoint PHP blog has posted a tutorial showing you how to use the Selenium web driver API from inside of your PHPUnit tests. Selenium is an automation tool that makes testing frontends of applications simpler.

Previously, we demonstrated using Selenium with PHPUnit and used a user subscription form example throughout the article. In this one, we are going to explore Facebook’s webdriver package for emulating a browser. PHPUnit partially supports the Selenium WebDriver API and the work is still in progress. One of the most popular WebDriver API implementations is the Facebook/webdriver package. We will try to accomplish the same validation tests from the previous article using this package.

They help you get the Facebook package installed (via Composer) and create a first simple test class. They create an instance of the RemoteWebDriver object and point it at their local application. A test is then created to navigate to a form, fill in a bit of data and submit it. The results are then checked for a string ("Everything is Good!") to pass the test. He also shows how to have the driver wait for an element to load, possibly one that uses an AJAX request. The post finishes off with a look at some of the other interaction methods (drag and drop, handling popups) and how to run the tests in a "headless" mode not requiring a browser to execute through your system.