Nette Tester: enjoyable unit testing

Nette Tester is a productive and enjoyable unit testing framework. It's used by the Nette Framework and is capable of testing any PHP code.

Installation

The best way how to install is to download a latest package or use a Composer:

php composer.phar require --dev nette/tester

Nette Tester requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Collecting and processing code coverage information depends on Xdebug.

Writing Tests

Imagine that we are testing this simple class:

class Greeting
{
	function say($name)
	{
		if (!$name) {
			throw new InvalidArgumentException('Invalid name.');
		}
		return "Hello $name";
	}
}

So we create test file named greeting.test.phpt:

require 'src/bootstrap.php';

use Tester\Assert;

$h = new Greeting;

// use an assertion function to test say()
Assert::same( 'Hello John', $h->say('John') );

Thats' all!

Now we run tests from command-line using the tester command:

> tester
 _____ ___  ___ _____ ___  ___
|_   _/ __)( __/_   _/ __)| _ )
  |_| \___ /___) |_| \___ |_|_\  v1.5.0

PHP 5.3.16 | "php-cgi" -n | 8 threads
.
OK (1 tests, 0 skipped, 0.0 seconds)

Nette Tester prints dot for successful test, F for failed test and S when the test has been skipped.

Assertions

This table shows all assertions (class Assert means Tester\Assert):

• Assert::same($expected, $actual) - Reports an error if $expected and $actual are not the same.
• Assert::notSame($expected, $actual) - Reports an error if $expected and $actual are the same.
• Assert::equal($expected, $actual) - Like same(), but identity of objects and the order of keys in the arrays are ignored.
• Assert::notEqual($expected, $actual) - Like notSame(), but identity of objects and arrays order are ignored.
• Assert::contains($needle, array $haystack) - Reports an error if $needle is not an element of $haystack.
• Assert::contains($needle, string $haystack) - Reports an error if $needle is not a substring of $haystack.
• Assert::notContains($needle, array $haystack) - Reports an error if $needle is an element of $haystack.
• Assert::notContains($needle, string $haystack) - Reports an error if $needle is a substring of $haystack.
• Assert::true($value) - Reports an error if $value is not TRUE.
• Assert::false($value) - Reports an error if $value is not FALSE.
• Assert::truthy($value) - Reports an error if $value is not truthy.
• Assert::falsey($value) - Reports an error if $value is not falsey.
• Assert::null($value) - Reports an error if $value is not NULL.
• Assert::nan($value) - Reports an error if $value is not NAN.
• Assert::type($type, $value) - Reports an error if the variable $value is not of PHP or class type $type.
• Assert::exception($closure, $class, $message = NULL, $code = NULL) - Checks if the function throws exception.
• Assert::error($closure, $level, $message = NULL) - Checks if the function $closure throws PHP warning/notice/error.
• Assert::match($pattern, $value) - Compares result using regular expression or mask.
• Assert::matchFile($file, $value) - Compares result using regular expression or mask sorted in file.
• Assert::count($count, $value) - Reports an error if number of items in $value is not $count.

Testing exceptions:

Assert::exception(function() {
	$h = new Greeting;
	$h->say(NULL);
}, 'InvalidArgumentException', 'Invalid name.');

Testing PHP errors, warnings or notices:

Assert::error(function() {
	$h = new Greeting;
	echo $h->abc;
}, E_NOTICE, 'Undefined property: Greeting::$abc');

Tips and features

Running unit tests manually is annoying, so let Nette Tester to watch your folder with code and automatically re-run tests whenever code is changed:

tester -w /my/source/codes

Running tests in parallel is very much faster and Nette Tester uses 8 threads as default. If you wish to run the tests in series use:

tester -j 1

How do you find code that is not yet tested? Use Code-Coverage Analysis. This feature requires you have installed Xdebug in php.ini. This will generate nice HTML report in coverage.html.

tester . -c php.ini --coverage coverage.html --coverage-src /my/source/codes

We can load Nette Tester using Composer's autoloader. In this case it is important to setup Nette Tester environment:

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

Tester\Environment::setup();

We can also test HTML pages. Let the template engine generate HTML code or download existing page to $html variable. We will check whether the page contains form fields for username and password. The syntax is the same as the CSS selectors:

$dom = Tester\DomQuery::fromHtml($html);

Assert::true( $dom->has('input[name="username"]') );
Assert::true( $dom->has('input[name="password"]') );

For more inspiration see how Nette Tester tests itself.

Running tests

The command-line test runner can be invoked through the tester command (or php tester.php). Take a look at the command-line options:

> tester

Usage:
    tester.php [options] [<test file> | <directory>]...

Options:
    -p <path>                    Specify PHP executable to run (default: php-cgi).
    -c <path>                    Look for php.ini file (or look in directory) <path>.
    -l | --log <path>            Write log to file <path>.
    -d <key=value>...            Define INI entry 'key' with value 'val'.
    -s                           Show information about skipped tests.
    --stop-on-fail               Stop execution upon the first failure.
    -j <num>                     Run <num> jobs in parallel (default: 8).
    -o <console|tap|junit|none>  Specify output format.
    -w | --watch <path>          Watch directory.
    -i | --info                  Show tests environment info and exit.
    --setup <path>               Script for runner setup.
    --colors [1|0]               Enable or disable colors.
    --coverage <path>            Generate code coverage report to file.
    --coverage-src <path>        Path to source code.
    -h | --help                  This help.