Test system on php

10 Best PHP Testing Frameworks To Use in 2023

A framework is a collection or set of tools and processes that work together to support testing and developmental activities. It contains various utility libraries, reusable modules, test data setup, and other dependencies. Be it web development or testing, there are multiple frameworks that can enhance your team’s efficiency and productivity. Web testing, in particular, has a plethora of frameworks, and selecting a framework that suits your needs depends on your language of choice.

Amongst all server-side programming languages, 80% of websites use PHP, and the right framework can make the job easier. We decided to dive deeper into PHP and find out what the best PHP testing frameworks are. In this blog, we will be focusing on automated testing frameworks and will be listing out the best PHP frameworks that will allow you to write your test cases in a standard format.

Choosing The Best PHP Testing Frameworks

If you want to pick the best framework, no matter whether its a new PHP framework or a well-known JavaScript framework, it has to be structured in such a manner that it provides various benefits as listed below-

• Maintains a well-defined code structure
• Maintains reusable modules and libraries which can effectively be used for testing, thereby achieving code reusability.
• Enhances the speed of the testing process
• Improves test efficiency
• Avoids code duplication
• Analyzes test coverage as well as requirement coverage

A framework is an integral part of testing, and hence it is crucial to select the framework type based on our project requirement. First of all, to set up a framework, one must know each framework’s pros and cons. Only then it will be easy to list out our requirements and select specific automated testing frameworks. Once you have an idea about your needs, you can go ahead and choose one amongst the best PHP testing frameworks.

To help you in doing that, let’s take you through the best PHP frameworks in detail.

Best PHP Testing Frameworks Of 2023

Several frameworks have been and are being used for development and testing purposes. But each one is unique in its own way and offers unique features. We will discuss how the best PHP testing frameworks approach test automation and what pros or cons they all offer. Without further ado, let’s look at the best PHP frameworks.

1. PHPUnit
2. Codeception
3. Storyplayer
4. SeleniumHQ
5. Behat
6. Atoum
7. SimpleTest
8. PhpSpec
9. Peridot
10. Kahlan

As promised above, we will now analyze each of these PHP testing frameworks in detail to help you make the final choice.

1. PHPUnit

PHPUnit is the most commonly used PHP testing framework, and it is considered a programmer-oriented framework. It is mostly preferred for unit testing. It was developed by Sebastian Bergmann and is an instance of the xUnit framework architecture.

Steps To Install

There are a few prerequisites that must be satisfied before installing this framework. Firstly, you need to install a higher version of PHP for installing the latest version of PHPUnit. As per their official documentation, it is recommended to use PHP version 7.3 for PHPUnit 9.3, the latest PHPUnit version. Below are the steps to install PHPUnit in your system.

Step 1: PHPUnit can be installed by downloading the PHAR (PHP Archive) from the below link
https://www.php.net/phar

PHAR has all the required PHPUnit dependencies bundled in a single file.

Step 2: You may also install Composer which manages all the dependencies in the project.

Advantages Of Using PHPUnit Framework

PHPUnit is considered one of the best PHP frameworks due to several reasons. Listed below are some of the advantages of using PHPUnit for automated testing-

1. It is one of the frameworks which allows us to analyze the code coverage efficiently. Based on an in-depth analysis, it can also generate code coverage reports in HTML and also XML log files with more information. Sometimes there might be a few blocks of code that cannot be tested. In such cases, we can use different annotations like @codeCoverageIgnore, @codeCoverageIgnoreStart, and @codeCoverageIgnoreEnd, which are used to ignore certain code blocks while running through code coverage analysis. We can also run the code coverage analysis for certain code blocks by specifying them with @covers annotation.
2. While writing the test cases, some tests would be left without any implementations. When executed, those cases return a success message, but it isn’t very meaningful to have such a report. PHPUnit provides an interface that raises an exception when an unimplemented test is run.
3. All the tests can be grouped together into a suite and run at once with the help of an XML configuration file.A simple XML configuration file would look like below-

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How to Test PHP Code With PHPUnit

Zubair Idris Aweda

There are many different ways to test your software application, and unit testing is an important one.

So what is unit testing and how can you do it? You’ll learn that and more in this article.

What is Unit Testing?

Unit testing is a software development process in which the smallest testable parts of an application, called units, are individually and independently scrutinised for process operation. — SearchSoftwareQuality

In basic terms, unit testing means that you break your application down to its simplest pieces and test these small pieces to ensure that each part is error free (and secure).

This testing is automated and written by software engineers as part of their development process. This is a very important step during development as it helps developers build better applications with fewer bugs.

What is PHPUnit?

You can perform unit testing in PHP with PHPUnit, a programmer-oriented testing framework for PHP. PHPUnit is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks. It is very easy to install and get started with.

PHPUnit Installation

You can install PHPUnit globally on your server. You can also install it locally, on a per-project, development-time basis as a dependency to your project using composer. This article will explain how to use it on a per project basis.

To get started, create and initiate a new project with composer using these commands:

$ mkdir test-project $ cd test-project $ composer init

The first command creates a folder in your current directory, test-project and the second command moves into it. The last command starts an interactive shell.

Follow the prompt, filling in the details as required (the default values are fine). You can set the project description, author name (or contributors’ names), minimum stability for dependencies, project type, license, and define your dependencies.

You can skip the dependencies part, as we are not installing any dependencies. PHPUnit is supposed to be a dev-dependency because testing as a whole should only happen during development.

Now, when the prompt asks Would you like to define your dev dependencies (require-dev) interactively [yes]? , press enter to accept. Then type in phpunit/phpunit to install PHPUnit as a dev-dependency .

Accept the other defaults and proceed to generating the composer.json file. The generated file should look like this currently:

The output shows that we ran 1 test, and made 3 assertions in it. We also see how long it took to run the test, as well as how much memory was used in running the test.

These assertions are what PHPUnit uses to compare values returned from the methods to their expected value.

This example uses assertSame to check if the name and age properties on the user object match the entered values. It also uses assertEmpty to check that the favorite_movies array is empty.

To see a list of all these assertions, you can check out PHPUnit’s docs here.

Edit the code to check if the user age is the same as 21.

public function testClassConstructor() < $user = new User(18, 'John'); $this->assertSame('John', $user->name); $this->assertSame(21, $user->age); $this->assertEmpty($user->favorite_movies); > 

Running the test again this time gives this output:

The output now shows that we ran 1 test, with 2 successful assertions, and also a failed one. We can see some explanation of the failure, showing the expected value, the gotten value, and the line where the error is from.

Test testName and tellAge

Next, we can test the testName method. This method tells the name of a user as a sentence. So, we can write the test to check:

• If the returned value is a string.
• If the returned string has the user’s name in it (with or without case sensitivity).

public function testTellName() < $user = new User(18, 'John'); $this->assertIsString($user->tellName()); $this->assertStringContainsStringIgnoringCase('John', $user->tellName()); >

The test uses the assertions assertIsString and assertStringContainsStringIgnoringCase to check that the return value is a string and that it contains the string John, respectively.

The testAge method is very similar to testName and uses the same logic. Its test will be similar to the previous one:

public function testTellAge() < $user = new User(18, 'John'); $this->assertIsString($user->tellAge()); $this->assertStringContainsStringIgnoringCase('18', $user->tellAge()); >

Test addFavoriteMovie

We can test this method, too. This method adds a movie to the list of movies. To test it, we can check if the newly added movie is in the list, and that the number of items in the list actually increased.

The latter is for confirming that items are not being displaced. Also, since the function returns some value at the end, we can check that this value is correct too.

public function testAddFavoriteMovie() < $user = new User(18, 'John'); $this->assertTrue($user->addFavoriteMovie('Avengers')); $this->assertContains('Avengers', $user->favorite_movies); $this->assertCount(1, $user->favorite_movies); >

Here, we use a few new assertions – assertTrue , assertContains , and assertCount – to check that the returned value is true, that it contains the newly added string, and that the array now has one item in it.

Test removeFavoriteMovie

Finally, we can test that the method to remove a movie works.

public function testRemoveFavoriteMovie() < $user = new User(18, 'John'); $this->assertTrue($user->addFavoriteMovie('Avengers')); $this->assertTrue($user->addFavoriteMovie('Justice League')); $this->assertTrue($user->removeFavoriteMovie('Avengers')); $this->assertNotContains('Avengers', $user->favorite_movies); $this->assertCount(1, $user->favorite_movies); >

Here, we’re adding some movies to the list. Then, we remove one of them, and confirm that the function returned true. Next, we confirm the removal by checking that the value is no longer in the list. Finally, we confirm that we have only one movie in the list, instead of two.

Conclusion

Now you know how to set up PHPUnit in your projects and how to test and ensure that you’re building world class software. You can find all the code for this article here.

If you have any questions or relevant advice, please get in touch with me to share them.

To read more of my articles or follow my work, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Github. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s free!

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