Instant Hands-on Testing with PHPUnit How-to

83 Pages·2013·0.813 MB·English

by  Michael Lively

Instant Hands-on
Testing with PHPUnit
How-to
A practical guide to getting started with PHPUnit to improve
code quality
Michael Lively
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Instant Hands-on Testing with PHPUnit
How-to
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
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First published: May 2013
Production Reference: 1170513
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Michael Lively Michelle Quadros
Reviewers Proofreader
Brian Feaver Lydia May Morris
Adam Englander
Production Coordinator
Melwyn D'sa
Acquisition Editor
Mary Jasmine Nadar
Cover Work
Melwyn D'sa
Commissioning Editor
Yogesh Dalvi
Cover Image
Aditi Gajjar
Technical Editor
Worrell Lewis
About the Author
Michael Lively has worked in a variety of roles in the software development industry for 12
years, from developer to architect and now a software development director. He has worked
on a variety of different projects and a variety of different technologies over that time, from
small home-grown sites serving a handful of regular users to large enterprise platforms serving
millions of consumers. In addition to his professional work, he has been an active member of
the PHP open source community. Some of his contributions include the database extension for
PHPUnit and more recently an alternative mocking framework for PHP called Phake.
I would like to thank everyone who, over the years, has given me
opportunities to work in and with the technology industry. From my schooling
to the present day I have had the fortunate blessing of meeting some of
the most gifted and knowledgeable folks in the IT industry. Specifically, I
would like to thank Sebastian Bergmann who introduced me to unit testing
and provided me great opportunities to contribute back to the community.
I would also like to thank Brian Feaver and Adam Englander. Both are
fantastic co-workers and gave me lots of great feedback when I discussed
topics for this book with them.
Last but certainly not least this journey called life would not be nearly as
complete without my girls. I would like to thank my wonderful wife Sharon
and my fantastic girls Trinity, Hannah, and Gracelyn. Their patience and
willingness to chase my goals with me has made all the difference in the
world.
About the Reviewers
Brian Feaver is the Lead Software Architect at Selling Source LLC. He's been a software
developer for over 10 years, contributes to multiple open source projects, and participates
in developer-user communities. He is a strong advocate of developer testing and automated
testing in general.
Adam Englander is the CTO of Coupla where he leads their development and cloud
platform initiatives. He is an accomplished software professional with more than 25 years of
architecting and developing critical business systems. He is a testing evangelist and resource
to the development community. He develops testing tools and, in addition, speaks to various
groups about these tools and the testing methodologies in general.
Coupla is an online community with the singular goal of making stronger couples relationships.
Coupla is a proud member of Vegas Tech and the Las Vegas Startup Community.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Instant Hands-on Testing with PHPUnit How-to 7
Installing PHPUnit (Simple) 7
Writing your first test (Simple) 9
Running tests (Simple) 12
Configuring PHPUnit (Simple) 14
Adding PHPUnit to your project (Simple) 16
Generating tests from code (Advanced) 18
Using test fixtures (Simple) 24
Using data providers (Intermediate) 26
Using test dependencies (Advanced) 29
Using mock objects (Simple) 33
Testing abstract classes (Intermediate) 44
Testing traits (Intermediate) 47
Testing exceptions and errors (Intermediate) 48
Testing output (Intermediate) 50
Testing protected and private methods (Intermediate) 52
Testing database interaction (Advanced) 55
Viewing code coverage (Advanced) 66

Preface
The goal of almost every software developer is to create code that is free from defects and
works as intended. To help ensure this goal is met we spend a significant amount of time
testing the code that we have written. As software grows in size and complexity the likelihood
of defects being introduced increases. Naturally, we have to increase our efforts in testing to
help accommodate the increased risk.
When I first began writing software I would test my applications by manually running through
a series of steps on a deployed application. I would add items to my cart, I would remove
them again, I would manually check to make sure taxes and shipping costs were calculated
correctly. I spent a lot of time looking at as much functionality as I could think of. Commonly,
I would miss some less obvious pieces of functionality and small bugs would slowly creep into
the code as the software aged and my memory of the intricate details of how it worked faded.
Fortunately, I was introduced to the concept of automated testing fairly early on in my career.
Automated testing, specifically automated unit testing is a powerful tool in any programmer's
arsenal. It allows us to have an easily repeatable way to check and make sure the software we
write is working the way we intend. It provides future maintainers of the code with the ability
to have confidence that they can change functionality and not be worried that they will regress
the code back to old errors. It gives us freedom as software developers to focus more time on
moving our software forward instead of living in fear that any change we make will cause the
system to break.
There are many tools to help you write effective unit tests quickly. In PHP, the leading tool is
PHPUnit. In this book, we are going to learn how you can use PHPUnit in your project to create
a test suite that can give you an increased level of confidence in the software you are writing.
What this book covers
Installing PHPUnit (Simple) will teach you how to install PHPUnit using the PEAR package
manager. You will also learn about some alternative ways to install PHPUnit.
Writing your first test (Simple) will help you create a basic test and learn about the common
phases of a unit test written in PHPUnit.