Unit testing symfony plugins with php unit

Unit testing symfony plugins with PHPUnit

Christian Schäfer

Christian Schäfer: Unit testing von symfony plugins with PHPUnit

About myself
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nick: caefer
●
34, married, two cats
●
senior system architect at Gruner+Jahr in hamburg
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web developer for over 11 years
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symfony developer for over 3 years

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blogs daily on http://test.ical.ly
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tweets @testically
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experiments on github.com/caefer
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loves scottish whisky, british comedy and uncommon music
and his wife and two cats obviously :)


What is your motivation?

• What is your main interest when developing plugins?
• Do you unit test your plugins?
• Who has worked with PHPUnit before?


Defining the goals
When developing plugins you want to make sure they..

• ..can be used stand-alone
• ..can be installed easily
• ..hold as little dependencies as possible*

• ..work!

* where dependencies to symfony itself and Doctrine or Propel are only natural


Prerequisites
In this talk I will be using the following:

• symfony 1.4
• PHPUnit 3.5
• Hudson CI
• sfTaskExtraPlugin

Always use sfTaskExtraPlugin when creating a new plugin!


A word about unit testing in symfony 1
lime works! ..but
• Not too well documented
• Not found outside symfony
• Not easy to integrate in continuous integration servers

Why I prefer PHPUnit instead
• It's well documented
• It's well distributed
• It's the de factor standard in the PHP world
• It's actively maintained
• It can easily be integrated in Hudson, phpUnderControl,
Bamboo, yourFavouriteCISoftware


Getting started
Did I mention to use sfTaskExtraPlugin ?

Create a plugin with this command:

$ php symfony generate:plugin csTicTacToePlugin

Then take a look at the files that were created.
Two things are of particular interest:

• test/fixtures/project/*
• test/bootstrap/unit.php


The fixture project
The fixture project is a sandbox, a testing environment for your plugin.

• It is a fully working symfony project.
• You can even point a vHost to its web folder! (don't!)

• You can run symfony commands in it.*

• Add/remove/modify anything in it that your plugin requires of any
project!
• Document everything you change.

* beforehand: $ export SYMFONY=/path/to/your/symfony/lib/dir


The fixture project - todos
• Configure a database connection

dsn: sqlite::memory:

• Generate your models

$ php symfony doctrine:build allclasses

• Enable modules if exist
• Create test fixtures in data/fixtures/
• Create local schema.yml if required for testing (i.e. for behaviours)
• Enable plugins if required by your plugin


The bootstrap
The bootstrapping process is responsible for firing up symfony and
all that is required for your tests.

This can include

• Autoloading symfony
• Enable required plugins (i.e. your own)
• Autoloading project specific classes (i.e. model classes)
• Database configuration
• Rest of the configuration cascade


The bootstrap - todos
• Remove lime

require_once $configuration>getSymfonyLibDir().'/vendor/lime/lime.php';

• Adjust project configuration to your needs

$projectPath = dirname(__FILE__).'/../fixtures/project';
1. Generic project config → symfony paths, plugins, project autoloading, database, configuration cascade
$configuration = new sfProjectConfiguration($projectPath);
2. Fixture project config → symfony paths, plugins, project autoloading, database, configuration cascade
require_once($projectPath.'/config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php');
$configuration = new ProjectConfiguration($projectPath);
3. Fixture application config → symfony paths, plugins, project autoloading, database, configuration cascade
require_once($projectPath.'/config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php');
$configuration = ProjectConfiguration::getApplicationConfiguration('frontend', 'test', true);


Pre-configuring PHPUnit
With the 3.5 release using PHPUnit became much more convenient!

Create a phpunit.xml.dist for a default configuration and ship it
with your plugin. Users can create their own phpunit.xml which will
be prefered by PHPUnit if it exists.

• 1. Configure bootstrap
• 2. Configure the path to the symfony lib dir
• 3. Configure the path to the unit tests
• 4. Configure scope for the coverage report


Pre-configuring PHPUnit - todos
1. Configure bootstrap
<phpunit … bootstrap="test/bootstrap/unit.php" … >
2. Configure the path to the symfony lib dir
  <php><server name="SYMFONY" value="../symfony/"/></php>
3. Configure the path to the unit tests
  <testsuites>
    <testsuite name="csTicTacToePlugin Suite">
      <directory>./test/unit/</directory>
    </testsuite>
  </testsuites>
4. Configure scope for the coverage report
  <filter>
    <whitelist addUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="true">
      <directory suffix=".php">./lib/</directory>
      <directory suffix=".php">./config/</directory>
    </whitelist>
  </filter>


Using the database
Always initialize the database in your TestCases setUp() method!*

• Initialize the database manager
new sfDatabaseManager(ProjectConfiguration::getActive());
• Create database
Doctrine_Manager::getInstance()>createDatabases('doctrine');
• Create all tables
Doctrine_Core::createTablesFromModels(sfConfig::get('sf_lib_dir'));
• Create specific tables
Doctrine_Core::createTablesFromArray(array('SomeRecord', ..));
• Load fixtures
Doctrine_Core::loadData(sfConfig::get('sf_data_dir').'/fixtures/fixtures.
yml')

* This is Doctrine specific! Unfortunately I don't know how to do the following with Propel..


Lets see an example
Here's a simple plugin for demonstration:
http://github.com/caefer/csTicTacToePlugin

Here are a few of my best practices:
• Test every class in your config and lib folder.
• Write one test case per class.
• Mirror the directory structure in your test/unit folder.
• Name you test case like the covered class postfixed with “Test”.

config/csTicTacToePluginConfiguration.class.php
lib/model/doctrine/PluginTicTacToe.class.php
→ test/unit/config/csTicTacToePluginConfiguration.class.php
→ test/unit/lib/model/doctrine/PluginTicTacToe.class.php


Questions anybody?


Cheers!
..now let's go to lunch.

Unit testing symfony plugins with php unit

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