PHP PEAR Questions and Answers - Unit test standard

Author

Unit test standard

Jackson Miller

2004-06-06, 3:56 pm

Is there a PEAR coding standard for unit tests? I don't see it mentioned
anywhere in the coding standards section of pear.php.net.

Also, is there a recommended (general or PEAR specific) way to write unit
tests for classes that connect to a database and run queries?

Thanks,
-Jackson

Greg Beaver

2004-06-06, 3:56 pm

Jackson Miller wrote:

> Is there a PEAR coding standard for unit tests? I don't see it mentioned
> anywhere in the coding standards section of pear.php.net.
>
> Also, is there a recommended (general or PEAR specific) way to write unit
> tests for classes that connect to a database and run queries?
>
> Thanks,
> -Jackson

Hi Jackson,

There is no standard. Any package that interacts with the outside world
probably should provide tests that can work with a real outside
situation, or with mock objects that simulate the outside world. In
this way, users can verify with both real-world and with expected real
world. In other words, you want to test that the code responds
correctly to expected input (both valid and invalid), and then you
should have separate tests that make sure the input you're getting from
the database matches the expected input.

Please forgive me if this is old news to you - I do not mean to be
patronizing.

Here's a rundown of the advantages/di

vantages of the three big options:

Simpletest has a nice mock object implementation, but is not in PEAR
phpt (run-tests.php from PHP's cvs in php-src) can handle crashes in
PHP, but requires re-inventing the wheel for every test (no helper
methods exist like the assert*() methods)
PHPUnit is in PEAR, but not as powerful as Simpletest.

Unit testing is relatively new in PEAR - most packages don't have any.
We're still trying to get people to document their code, so it's kind of
a baby steps situation :). If you discover any neat tricks or have
difficulties in unit testing, you should definitely post them.

Greg

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