What Is Automated Testing?
Automated testing means verifying your application’s behaviour using repeatable, scripted tests—so you can release code with confidence.
In our Drupal projects, we focus on:
- Unit tests (PHPUnit) – Validate individual pieces of code in isolation
- Functional & integration tests (Behat) – Verify features, workflows, and integration points end-to-end using tests written in plain language so non-technical stakeholders can understand and validate expected outcomes
This combination ensures that both the technical correctness and the business requirements are continuously validated.
Why Work With Us
We’re not just users of testing tools—we’ve helped improve them.
- Experienced with PHPUnit and Behat for Drupal and PHP projects
- Authors of several open-source libraries and plugins that speed up test writing and improve maintainability in Behat
- Use Behat to test both frontend user flows and backend business rules—without needing separate JavaScript-heavy tools
- Can translate business requirements into automated test scenarios that your team (technical and non-technical) can read and approve
This means faster, more maintainable tests—and fewer regressions.
What We Do
- Review your current testing approach and coverage gaps
- Set up PHPUnit for backend and Drupal-specific unit tests
- Configure Behat for functional, integration, and end-to-end scenarios
- Implement custom step definitions, helpers, and plugins to streamline test authoring
- Integrate test suites into CI/CD pipelines
- Provide documentation and examples for your developers and testers
Implementation Approach
- Audit – Review existing tests, coverage, and tooling
- Setup – Install and configure PHPUnit and Behat for your stack
- Authoring – Create high-value tests for critical features and workflows
- Integration – Connect tests to CI/CD so they run automatically on every push/merge
- Optimisation – Reduce flakiness, improve performance, reduce running time, and expand coverage
- Handover – Train your team to extend and maintain the suite
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Who This Is For
- Teams needing reliable, automated regression checks
- Projects where business logic must be validated against real-world scenarios
- Drupal sites with complex workflows or multi-step processes
- Organisations moving to CI/CD who want automated quality gate
Real Example
In 2019, we developed a Drupal 8 website and built a comprehensive automated test suite alongside it—around 700 Behat tests with over 5,000 assertions. That same suite has since helped us successfully upgrade the site through Drupal 9, 10, and 11. The coverage allowed a small team to catch regressions and bugs early, ensuring core functionality was preserved throughout each migration.
FAQs
Why Behat instead of Cypress or Playwright?
Behat lets us test end-to-end workflows and business expectations in plain language, making tests accessible to non-developers. Behat also has a direct connection to the Drupal's internals, so it can prepare and run tests faster than Cypress and Playwright.
Do you write custom Behat steps?
Yes. We’ve authored reusable libraries(Opens in a new tab/window) and plugins(Opens in a new tab/window) that speed up test writing and reduce boilerplate.
Can you integrate testing into our existing deployment process?
Absolutely. We specialise in embedding tests into automated CI/CD pipelines.
What if we don’t have a CI pipeline? Where would we run these tests?
We can set up a pipeline for you using our state-of-the-art Vortex(Opens in a new tab/window) product.