codeception

What is the purpose, and proper use of wantTo() in Codeception?

I'm using the testing framework Codeception to do BDD. I understand the idea of wanting something, but I don't understand what the function does.

$I->wantTo('Understand what this method does!');
Solution

  • http://codeception.com/docs/03-AcceptanceTests#Comments

    Commands like amGoingTo, expect, expectTo help you in making tests more descriptive.

    $I->wantTo('Understand what this method does!');

    will be rendered as * I want to understand what this method does! in verbose output.

    Update 2022-11-16:

    My original answer was incorrect, wantTo is not a comment method, it renames test method in the output.

    Example:

    I created very simple Cest class:

    <?php

class ExampleCest
{
    public function provideExample(CliGuy $I)
    {
    }
}

    When I ran it, I got the following output:

    Cli Tests (1) --------------------------------------------
U ExampleCest: Provide example (0.00s)
---------------------------------------------------------

    but after adding $I->wantTo('change test name!'); to method: I got the following output:

    Cli Tests (1) --------------------------------------------
U ExampleCest: Change test name! (0.00s)
---------------------------------------------------------

    The benefit of wantTo is that it allows to use characters not permitted in method names or different formatting than automatically generated.

    I looked up if wantTo has any documentation and all I found was old blog post using examples in class-less Cept format (which is deprecated and is likely to be removed in Codeception 6).

    <?php

$I = new TestGuy($scenario);
$I->wantTo('log in to site');
$I->amOnPage('/');
$I->click('Login');
$I->fillField('username', 'admin');

    In Cept format wantTo had better purpose, because it didn't override anything, but provided additional information next to file name.