Blackfire Player

Blackfire Player is a powerful Web Crawling, Web Testing, and Web Scraper application. It provides a nice DSL to crawl HTTP services, assert responses, and extract data from HTML/XML/JSON responses.

Some Blackfire Player use cases:

• Crawl a website/API and check expectations -- aka Acceptance Tests;
• Scrape a website/API and extract values;
• Monitor a website;
• Test code with unit test integration (PHPUnit, Behat, Codeception, ...);
• Test code behavior from the outside thanks to the native Blackfire Profiler integration -- aka Unit Tests from the HTTP layer (tm).

Blackfire Player executes scenarios written in a special DSL (files should end with .bkf).

Download

Running .bkf files can be done via the Blackfire Player:

curl -OLsS http://get.blackfire.io/blackfire-player.phar

Use php blackfire-player.phar to run the player or make it executable and move it to a directory under your PATH:

chmod +x blackfire-player.phar
mv blackfire-player.phar /usr/local/bin/blackfire-player

Note

Blackfire Player is licensed under the MIT Open-Source license. Its source code is hosted on Github.

Usage

Use the run command to execute a scenario:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf

Use the --endpoint option to override the endpoint defined in scenarios:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --endpoint=http://example.com/

Use the --concurrency option to run scenarios in parallel:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --concurrency=5

Use the --json option to output a JSON report:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --json

Use the --variables option to override variable values:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --variables="foo=bar" --variables="bar=foo"

Use -v to get logs about the progress of the player or use tracer option to store all requests and responses on disk.

The command returns 1 if at least one scenario fails, 0 otherwise.

Crawling an HTTP application

Blackfire Player lets you crawl an application thanks to descriptive scenarios written in a domain specific language:

name "A build made of scenario"

scenario
    name "Scenario Name"
    endpoint "http://example.com/"

    visit url('/')
        expect status_code() == 200

This example shows how to make a request on an HTTP application (http://example.com/) and be sure that it behaves the way you expect it to by Writing Expectations (the status code of the response is 200).

Store the scenario in a scenario.bkf, and run it:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf

# or
php blackfire-player run scenario.bkf

Add more requests to a scenario by indenting lines as below:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        expect status_code() == 200

    visit url('/blog/')
        expect status_code() == 200

Note

The line indentation defines the structure like for Python scripts or YAML files. Validate bkf files with the validate command: blackfire-player validate scenario.bkf.

A scenario is a sequence of HTTP calls (steps) that share the HTTP session and cookies. Scenario definitions are declarative, the order of settings (like expectations) within a "step" does not matter.

Instead of making discrete requests like above, you can also interact with the HTTP response if the content type is HTML by clicking on links, submitting forms, or follow redirections (see Making requests for more information):

scenario
    visit url('/')
        expect status_code() == 200

    click link('Read more')
        expect status_code() == 200

Note

If your scenario does not work as expected, use -v to get a more verbose output.

Tip

You can add comments in a scenario file by prefixing the line with #:

# This is a comment
scenario
    # Comment are ignored
    visit url('/')
        expect status_code() == 200

Tip

An expression can be written on several lines with the following syntax:

scenario
    visit url('/login')
        method 'POST'
        body
        """
        {
            "user": "john",
            "password": "doe"
        }
        """

Making Requests

There are several ways you can jump from one HTTP request to the next.

Visiting a Page with visit

visit goes directly to the referenced HTTP URL (defaults to the GET HTTP method unless you define one explicitly):

scenario
    visit url('/')
        method 'POST'

You can also pass a Request body:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        method 'PUT'
        body '{ "title": "New Title" }'

Clicking on a Link with click

click clicks on a link in an HTML page (takes an expression as an argument):

scenario
    click link("Add a blog post")

Submitting Forms with submit

submit submits a form in an HTML page (takes an expression as an argument); parameters to submit with the form are defined via param entries:

scenario
    submit button("Submit")
        param title 'Happy Scraping'
        param content 'Scraping with Blackfire Player is so easy!'

        # File Upload:
        # the path is relative to the current .bkf file
        # the name parameter is optional
        param image file('relative/path/to/image.png', 'blackfire.png')

Values can also be randomly generated via the fake() function:

scenario
    submit button("Submit")
        param title fake('sentence', 5)
        param content join(fake('paragraphs', 3), "\n\n")

Note

fake() use the Faker library under the hood.

Following Redirections

HTTP redirections are never followed automatically to let you write expectations and assertions on redirect responses:

scenario
    visit "redirect.php"
        expect status_code() == 302
        expect header('Location') == '/redirected.php'

Use follow to follow one redirection:

scenario
    visit "redirect.php"
        expect status_code() == 302
        expect header('Location') == '/redirected.php'

    follow
        expect status_code() == 200

follow_redirects switches the player to automatically follow all redirections:

scenario
    follow_redirects true

or:

scenario
    visit "redirect.php"
        follow_redirects

Please note that when using follow_redirects, expectations (expect) and assertions (assert) are checked on the redirecting response (so, before the redirection). Use a follow step if you need to check them after the redirection.

Embedding Scenarios with include

include allows to embed some repetitive steps into several scenarios to avoid copy/pasting the same code over and over again:

In a groups.bkf file, write a group that contains the logic to log in:

group login
    visit url('/login')
        expect status_code() == 200

    submit button('Login')
        param user 'admin'
        param password 'admin'

Then, in another file, load the group and include it when you need it:

load "groups.bkf"

scenario
    name "Scenario Name"

    include login

    visit url('/admin')
        expect status_code() == 200

Configuring the Request

Each step can be configured via the following options.

Setting a Header with header

header sets a header:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        header "Accept-Language: en-US"

Tip

Simulate a specific browser is as simple as overriding the default User-Agent and using fake():

scenario
    visit url('/')
        header 'User-Agent: ' ~ fake('firefox')

Setting a User and Password with auth

auth sets the Authorization header:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        auth "username:password"

Waiting after sending the request with wait

wait adds a delay in milliseconds after sending the request:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        wait 10000

The wait value can be any valid expression; get a random delay by using fake():

scenario
    visit url('/')
        wait fake('numberBetween', 1000, 3000)

Sending a JSON Body with json

json configures the Request to upload JSON encoded data as the body:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        method 'POST'
        param foo "bar"
        json true

Setting Options for all Steps

You can also set some of these options for all steps of a scenario:

scenario
    auth "username:password"
    header "Accept-Language: en-US"

... which can be disabled on any given step by setting the value to false:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        header "Accept-Language: false"
        auth false

Writing Expectations

Expectations are expressions evaluated against the current HTTP response and if one of them returns a falsy value, Blackfire Player stops the run and generates an error.

Expressions have access to the following functions:

• current_url(): Returns the current URL
• status_code(): The HTTP status code for the current HTTP response;
• header(): Returns the value of an HTTP header;
• body(): The HTTP body for the current HTTP response;
• trim(): Strip whitespace from the beginning and end of a string;
• unique(): Removes duplicate values from an array;
• join(): Join array elements with a string;
• merge(): Merge one or more arrays;
• regex(): Perform a regular expression match;
• css(): Returns nodes matching the CSS selector (for HTML responses);
• xpath(): Returns nodes matching the XPath selector (for HTML and XML responses);
• json(): Returns JSON elements (from the request) matching the CSS expression.
• transform(): Returns JSON elements matching the CSS expression.

The css() and xpath() functions return Symfony\Component\DomCrawler\Crawler instances. Learn more about methods you can call on Crawler instances; the json() function returns a PHP array.

The json() function accepts JMESPath.

The result of calling functions can be checked via operators described.

Note

Learn more about Expressions syntax in the Symfony documentation.

Here are some expression examples:

# return all HTML nodes matching ".post h2 a"
css(".post h2 a")

# return the text of the first node matching ".post h2 a"
css(".post h2 a").first().text()

# return the href attribute of the first node matching ".post h2 a"
css(".post h2 a").first().attr("href")

# check that "h1" contains "Welcome"
css("h1:contains('Welcome')").count() > 0

# same as above
css("h1").first().text() matches "/Welcome/"

# return the Age request HTTP header
header("Age")

# check that the HTML body contains "Welcome"
body() matches "/Welcome/"

# get a value
json("_links.store.href")

# get keys
json("arguments."sql.pdo.queries".keys(@)")

Using Variables

Variables can be defined to make your scenarios dynamic. Use set to define the default value:

scenario
    name "HTTP Cache"
    set env "dev"
    set urls [ ... ]

    when "prod" == env
        with url in urls
            # check HTTP cache, but only on production

And override it with the --variable option on the CLI:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --variable env=prod

Organizing Scenario Files

To run scenarios defined in several files, you can use load instead of listing all the files as arguments to the player:

# load and execute all scenarios from files in this directory
load "*.bkf"

# load and execute all scenarios from files in all sub-directories
load "**/*.bkf"

Writing Blackfire Assertions

Note

To use Blackfire assertions, you will need your client credentials available at https://blackfire.io/my/settings/credentials

If you have installed the Blackfire CLI, be sure you have ran the command blackfire config once to create the ~/.blackfire.ini file where your credentials will be stored.

Alternatively, you can also set the environment variables BLACKFIRE_CLIENT_ID and BLACKFIRE_CLIENT_TOKEN before running the Blackfire Player.

Please note also that Blackfire assertions requires a Premium or Enterprise account purchased on https://blackfire.io.

Blackfire Player natively supports Blackfire:

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf

The Blackfire Player creates a build to group all scenarios. Each scenario in the build contains profiles and assertion reports for requests made in the executed scenario;

scenario
    name "Scenario Name"
    # Use the environment name (or UUID) you're targeting or false to disable
    blackfire "Environment name"

It's possible to use true instead of an environment name. In that case, the environment name should be set via the --blackfire-env CLI option:

scenario
    name "Scenario Name"
    # Use the environment name (or UUID) you're targeting or false to disable
    blackfire true

blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --blackfire-env="Environment name" # Use the environment name or environment UUID

Note

When using the --blackfire-env option, all requests are profiled by default via Blackfire, you can disable it for some requests by setting blackfire false.

When Blackfire support is enabled, the assertions defined in .blackfire.yml are automatically run along side expectations.

Additional features are also automatically activated:

• assert: An assertion to check
• samples: The number of samples

• warmup: Whether to warmup the URL first. Value can be:

  • true: Warmup only safe HTTP requests or when the number of samples is more than one. Warmup will be executed 3 times. (default value)
  • A number: Same behavior than true, but allow to change the number of warmup requests.
  • false: Disable warmup

scenario
    visit url('/blog/')
        name "Blog homepage"
        assert main.peak_memory < 10M
        samples 2
        warmup true

Variables are a great way to make your Blackfire assertions conditional:

scenario
    set env "prod"

    # no Twig template compilation in production
    # not enforced in other environments
    visit url('/blog/')
        assert "prod" == env and metrics.twig.compile.count == 0
        warmup true

Note

To make some comparisons with a previous build, you can set the external_id and external_parent_id settings of the build by passing environment variables:

BLACKFIRE_EXTERNAL_ID=current_build_reference \
BLACKFIRE_EXTERNAL_PARENT_ID=parent_build_reference \
blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --blackfire-env=ENV_NAME_OR_UUID

Scraping Values

When crawling an HTTP application you can extract values from HTTP responses:

scenario
    visit url('/')
        expect status_code() == 200
        set latest_post_title css(".post h2").first()
        set latest_post_href css(".post h2 a").first().attr("href")
        set latest_posts css(".post h2 a").extract('_text', 'href')
        set age header("Age")
        set content_type header("Content-Type")
        set token regex('/name="_token" value="([^"]+)"/')

set takes two arguments:

• The name of the variable you want to store the value in;
• An expression to evaluate.

Using json(), css(), and xpath() on JSON, HTML, and XML responses is recommended, but for pure text responses or complex values, you can use the generic regex() function.

Note

regex() takes a regex as an argument and always returns the first match. Note that backslashes must be escaped by doubling them: "/\\.git/".

The values are also available at the end of a crawling session:

# use --json to display a report including variable values
blackfire-player run scenario.bkf --json

Variable values can also be injected before running another scenario:

scenario
    name "Scenario name"
    auth api_username ~ ':' ~ api_password
    set profile_uuid 'zzzz'

    visit url('/profiles' ~ profile_uuid)
        expect status_code() == 200
        set sql_queries json('arguments."sql.pdo.queries".keys(@)')
        set store_url json("_links.store.href")

    visit url(store_url)
        method 'POST'
        body '{ "foo": "batman" }'
        expect status_code() == 200