Is your Container Running? Catch It! lint:container

Thanks for a great course! I've been upgrading an old legacy app all the way from 2.7, and this made the final leg that much smoother!

Hey Arne!

Thank you for this feedback! Wow, you did a great long way with upgrading your project, really good work! And we're really happy that our upgrading tutorials helps people with upgrading their own projects. Stay tuned with us for the future Symfony upgrades ;)

Cheers!

Hello ! Thank you for this superb training!
On the other hand there is a change you mentioned, the environment variable `PANTHER_APP_ENV = panther`

This means that if we set it equal to "test", Panther will rely on our test database (if defined) when it does its tests?

This is great because before that it was always relying on my ** dev ** database which was frustrating!

I had a chance to try, but unfortunately when I try to authenticate a user who is supposed to belong to the test database when I run Panther in ** test ** mode, it doesn't seem to work, authentication gives absolutely nothing. Have you ever experienced this?

Hey Kiuega!

First, I still haven't used Panther - just because we already use Behat + Mink in our site. So, I may not *fully* answer your question correctly ;).

Behind the scenes, Panther uses the PHP binary to start a built-in web server. Then, it makes requests to that running web server. And, indeed, the PANTHER_APP_ENV controls the environment that this built-in web server will be using. A few things about this:

A) Yes, if you set PANTHER_APP_ENV=test, then it would read your .env.test file (and config/packages/test/*). So if you have a custom database set up for the test environment, then your "running app" would use this. However, *also* realize that inside your test functions, if you boot Symfony's kernel and using the entity manager to insert data, that is an *entirely* different process and could use a different environment (though it uses the test environment by default).

B) The reason that PANTHER_APP_ENV is set to "panther" and not "test" by default can be found in the PR that added this to the recipe: https://github.com/symfony/... - as you can see, you actually *don't* want the "test" environment to be used with Panther because sessions aren't enabled correctly in the test environment. The reason is that normally the test environment (with functional tests) is meant for you to make "fake requests" (inside the same PHP process) from your PHPUnit test function into Symfony's kernel. There is no *real* request, so fake session handling can be used. But with Panther, there *is* a real web request. This may be why authentication gives you nothing - there is no session storage, so even if you authenticate, your successful authentication would never be set to a session cookie correctly.

Let me know if that helps!

Cheers!

Thank you for your reply ! I see, are you happy with the behat + mink combot? I have never used them yet.

Then, ok thanks for the explanations, it's clear now. But now in my use case which is the following:

Make real changes in the test database, authenticating each category of users and performing whatever actions they are supposed to be able to do in order to see if nothing is broken.

The solution I have to use for that is therefore not to define the variable PANTHER_APP_ENV (it will be at dev by default), and in my .env, switch the development database for the test database when I perform my tests. So what allows me to use Panther without any worries, it's simple, but not professional.

Now, since indeed, in test environment, there is no storage session, I would have to find something else.

I am wondering if it would be possible to create a new custom environment where I could take over all the configurations of the dev environment, but defining the test database. Thus, I will be able to use Panther, by defining the PANTHER_APP_ENV on the new environment created, which would therefore support the storage session, and the test database! What do you think ?

Hope my answer is clear forgive me I am using google translate to communicate

Hey Kiuega !

Thank you for your reply ! I see, are you happy with the behat + mink combot? I have never used them yet.

Definitely! But mostly it's because I like the BDD of Behat. Mink can actually be made to work with Selenium (which is what we use for historical reasons) or also Panther, though I haven't tried this yet - https://github.com/robertfausk/mink-panther-driver

I am wondering if it would be possible to create a new custom environment where I could take over all the configurations of the dev environment, but defining the test database

Yes, you are thinking exactly correct. What you really want is a "panther" environment that shares all the config with the test environment except for the session storage. And, hmm. I think the best way to do this might actually be to not create a new environment, but, kind of "fake it". Basically, use the "test" environment but with an extra flag that we can use to change the session storage. So, here is how:

A) Set PANTHER_APP_ENV=panther, which means that when the Symfony web server starts, APP_ENV will actually equal panther
B) In bootstrap.php, we're going to "short circuit" things. Before the .env files are loaded - so here - https://github.com/symfony/recipes/blob/38170f3d78c7e4f88fd26f8e3b153d96bb650445/symfony/framework-bundle/4.2/config/bootstrap.php#L10 - add this code:

if (isset($_SERVER['APP_ENV']) && $_SERVER['APP_ENV'] === 'panther') {
    $_SERVER['APP_ENV'] = 'test';
    $_SERVER['USING_PANTHER'] = true;
}

This changes the environment back to "test" before anything loads. BUT, we set a separate flag. We'll use this in Kernel.php

C) In src/Kernel.php, we will read the USING_PANTHER to load an extra config file. Right after this line - https://github.com/symfony/recipes/blob/38170f3d78c7e4f88fd26f8e3b153d96bb650445/symfony/framework-bundle/5.1/src/Kernel.php#L17

if (isset($_SERVER['USING_PANTHER']) && $_SERVER['USING_PANTHER']) {
    $container->import('../config/{packages}/panther/*.yaml');
}

D) Finally, we'll add a new `config/packages/panther/framework.yaml file with this:

framework:
    session:
        # if you have a custom value in your config/packages/framework.yaml, then use that value here instead
        storage_id: session.storage.native

I may have messed up a detail or three, but this is the idea. Let me know if this makes sense.

Cheers!

Hello weaverryan !
Thanks for your answer !

Okay I see what you wanna do! However, on Symfony 5.1 we no longer have the /config/bootstrap.php file

Is there another place I could put the code from step B)?

EDIT : Ok I tried just like this :

A) Set PANTHER_APP_ENV=panther
B) In Kernel.php, before load environment depending APP_ENV :

php
        if (isset($_SERVER['APP_ENV']) && 'panther' === $_SERVER['APP_ENV']) {
            $container->import('../config/{services}.yaml');
            $container->import('../config/{services}_test.yaml');
            $container->import('../config/{services}_'.$this->environment.'.yaml');
        }

C) Add config/packages/panther/framework.yaml with

yaml
framework:
    session:
        # if you have a custom value in your config/packages/framework.yaml, then use that value here instead
        storage_id: session.storage.native

Result : In the end, it works halfway. I can combine the two environments well, do my tests, but I have a new error which occurs when for example I submit a form. This error looks like:

Facebook\WebDriver\Exception\WebDriverCurlException : Curl error thrown for http POST to /session/0eaf7cedb30e3616fe4bfe306a90e50d/element/590fb2dd-8d44-4357-92f7-04b7ea4d3d99/click

Hey Kiuega !

Nice debugging - I forgot about the bootstrap.php change - it's all hidden in the core now :).

About the error, I'm going to assume that this /session/0eaf... URL is a URL on your site (and the test is submitting the form TO this URL) - let me know if that's wrong :).

The tricky part is... what's the error? This very likely could be a 500 error, and it could be uncovering a bug in your app - or just the fact that the test database isn't setup or many other possible things. I'm not familiar with Panther and the Facebook WebDriver, so I'm not sure how you're supposed to see the error instead of just this one unhelpful line. You could also check your var/log/test.log file to see the error there - but you may need to sort through a lot of noise.

Cheers!

Hi !

Well, I spent quite a bit of time on this problem, and in fact there were quite a few small problems!

A) First, I modified my Kernel.php so that it becomes:

        $container->import('../config/{packages}/*.yaml');

        if (isset($_SERVER['APP_ENV']) && 'panther' === $_SERVER['APP_ENV']) {
            $container->import('../config/{packages}/test/*.yaml');
        }

        $container->import('../config/{packages}/'.$this->environment.'/*.yaml');

// ...

B) Indeed, there was a bug with the database. Oddly, he kept using the dev database instead of the test database, I don't know why, even though we are in a panther environment. Therefore, I simply created the .env.panther file in which I put the variable DATABASE_URL for the test database. This made it possible to use the latter rather than that of dev.

C) The last problem, this error :

Facebook\WebDriver\Exception\WebDriverCurlException : Curl error thrown for http POST to /session/0eaf7cedb30e3616fe4bfe306a90e50d/element/590fb2dd-8d44-4357-92f7-04b7ea4d3d99/click

She only seemed to show up when I submitted a form with Panther. In my case, I wanted to add a coupon for Stripe (thanks for the training by the way). Before all that, when I simply switched environments for my tests, I had no problems. It's since I started wanting to fake an environment, I'm not sure why.

In this case, when I submitted a form, the URL should point to https://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/stripe/coupons with POST method

While looking on the internet, I came across this discussion: https://github.com/symfony/panther/issues/155
Same error, but no solutions for me. So bad.

I tried to switch back to the dev environment to see if it worked, and surprisingly, I got the same error!

In doubt I tried a composer recipes and... yes ! new update for symfony/framework-bundle

Update...... and

  - Configuring symfony/framework-bundle (>=5.1): From github.com/symfony/recipes:master
    Enabling the package as a Symfony bundle
    Copying files from recipe
      Created "./config/packages/cache.yaml"
      Created "./config/packages/framework.yaml"
      Created "./config/packages/test/framework.yaml"
      Created "./config/routes/dev/framework.yaml"
      Created "./config/services.yaml"
      Created "./public/index.php"
      Created "./src/Controller/.gitignore"
      Created "./src/Kernel.php"
    Adding environment variable defaults
    Adding entries to .gitignore

Wow...okay..I accepted the big changes, and tried again with the dev environment. No more mistakes.

I try again this time using the panther environment and ... it works!

In the end I am quite confused because there seemed to be quite a few small problems, and I don't really know where the real problem came from. Seems to be working, but I hope it will continue like this

Hey Kiuega!

A) The Kernel.php looks great!

B) This is probably because the .env files are loaded way before your Kernel.php code. What you would need to do (if you care enough), is what I said earlier (but with a change, because I forgot that bootstrap.php doesn't exist anymore). In index.php, right after the autoloader, you would add:

if (isset($_SERVER['APP_ENV']) && $_SERVER['APP_ENV'] === 'panther') {
    $_SERVER['APP_ENV'] = 'test';
    $_SERVER['USING_PANTHER'] = true;
}

Anyways, you don't need to do this - it sounds like you have things working, but this was my originally idea - to actually set APP_ENV to test, but set another flag so that we know panther is being used.

C) About updating the symfony/framework-bundle recipe and it working, haha, I really don't know :). Accepting that recipe would actually change your Kernel.php file back to how it looked before you changed it. So, I'm not really sure how your code looks in the end, but I'm happy it's working.

Overall, I'd say that this is definitely too hard, and it could almost definitely use some improvements to make it easier. I'll give it some thought.

Cheers!

Hey! Thanks for all your help! You are perfect !
I also think that we could do things more easily so as not to have to modify the index.php and kernel.php files which are still sensitive files. I imagine there is a better way to do it, but it will do for now.

Nevertheless, I still tell myself that it's a shame that Panther, which is a superb library, forces us to develop a lot of fixes to use it properly.

Thanks guys. This course was one of the best ever in my humble opinion. Cheers!

Hey Daniel!

Thank you for your feedback! You made our day! :)

Cheers!

Thank you for this tutorial. It worked like a charm. I had only minor issues due to now splitted packages as symfony/security and renaming a kernel variable by Gedmo logger configuration.

Hey Mumm

Thanks! I hope that wasn't a big problem :)

some chapter earlier it was mentioned in the tutorial that some packages in 5.0 are split. So it was easy to know where to search for more details eg. packagist. worked like a swiss knife. I never had a major upgrade of symfony that quick and easy

That's great to hear. Symfony devs do a great job trying to make as smooth as possible to upgrade the framework. Sometimes is not that easy as we would like to but with tutorials like this one, the upgrading process is even fun to do :)