Writing Unit tests in PHP

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2 min read

Testing is a critical part of the development process. It helps ensure that your code is working as expected and that no regressions have been introduced.

A unit test is a piece of code written to ensure that another piece of code is working correctly. There are a few different ways to create unit tests in PHP. One popular way is to use the PHPUnit framework.PHPUnit is a unit testing framework for the PHP programming language.

Some tips on how to write effective tests in PHP include:

  • Make sure your tests are well-organized and easy to understand.

  • Use data-driven testing whenever possible.

  • Write tests at the unit, integration, and functional levels.

  • Use a testing framework such as PHPUnit or SimpleTest.

  • Make sure your tests are comprehensive and cover all aspects of your code.

For this case, we're going to write a simple unit test using the PHPUnit framework. To install PHPUnit, you can use the Composer package manager. Once you have Composer installed, you can run the following command to install PHPUnit:

composer require phpunit/phpunit

Once PHPUnit is installed, you can create a new file called MyTest.php in your project's root directory. Inside this file, you can create a new class called MyTest that extends the PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase class:

<?php

use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;

class MyTest extends TestCase

{

}

Inside the MyTest class, you can create public methods that start with the word "test". These methods will be automatically executed when you run PHPUnit.

For example, the following test method will check that the PHP version is greater than or equal to 7.0:

public function testPhpVersion()

{

$this->assertGreaterThanOrEqual(

7.0,

PHP_VERSION

);

}

To run your tests, you can use the following command:

phpunit MyTest.php

This command will execute all of the test methods in the MyTest class.

For more resources on how to write Unit tests check this resource on Freecodecamp