Accessing Contexts from each other¶

When splitting the definitions in multiple contexts, it might be useful to access a context from another one. This is particularly useful when migrating from Behat 2.x to replace subcontexts.

Behat allows to access the environment in hooks, so other contexts can be retrieved using a BeforeScenario hook:

use Behat\Behat\Context\Context;
use Behat\Behat\Hook\Scope\BeforeScenarioScope;
use Behat\Hook\BeforeScenario;

class FeatureContext implements Context
{
    /** @var \Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext */
    private $minkContext;

    #[BeforeScenario]
    public function gatherContexts(BeforeScenarioScope $scope)
    {
        $environment = $scope->getEnvironment();

        $this->minkContext = $environment->getContext('Behat\MinkExtension\Context\MinkContext');
    }
}

Caution

Circular references in context objects would prevent the PHP reference counting from collecting contexts at the end of each scenarios, forcing to wait for the garbage collector to run. This would increase the memory usage of your Behat run. To prevent that, it is better to avoid storing the environment itself in your context classes. It is also better to avoid creating circular references between different contexts.

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