Guide: Implementing a PhpUnit Development Environment in PhpStorm

Introduction

Unit testing is one of the most critical aspects of Continuous Integration. For some background, I like the idea of TDD, but in the end… I am a developer, I code first, ask questions later. A sample repository can be found on GitHub

Preparation

For this example, I will be starting with the following:

• PhpTraits repository https://github.com/Waryway/PhpTraits
• PhpStorm Project

• Make certain you have a php interpreter referenced in your storm project
• Also make certain you have Composer referenced by PHPStorm
• A desire to test.allTheThings()

Getting started

Let's start from the very beginning

First, make composer do some work. We need a copy of phpunit.

Get it with this:

"require-dev":{ 

    "phpunit/phpunit":"6.4.3" 

}

As this is a 'library' style app - use an exact version. The lock file gets ignored in favor of precise dependencies in the composer.json.

Now run composer update to pull in the requested phpunit package.

Setup phpunit in the general settings, under phpunit

Adding a new test

Or rather, a test skeleton

1. Open the file to test in the Project View
2. Place you cursor on a method to test within the file
3. Go To Navigate -> Test
4. Create New test
5. I tend to set mine up with a test prefix to keep tests more obviously separate from code.

6. Click Ok then Open up the new file
7. Add a line to pull in the composer autoloader
8. Clean up the Namespace reference to the TestCase if you are using PSR-4
9. Disclaimer: Strongly avoid namespacing unit tests. They should not be built out like a code base. They are testing units.
10. Add an empty testHydrate method.
11. Add a super obvious assertion.
12. Add a phpunit.xml file
1. I put it in the test directory.
13. Run the test (At this point, I needed to restart phpstorm to detect that I actually had a 'test' to run.
14. Build the tests out further.

Conclusion

Ending of the beginning

I've gone ahead and built out the 'hydrate' test against a trait. Note the use of the trait object that phpunit provides. Pretty slick, right?  I'll continue to build out this repository - core libraries need the most directed test coverage.

Even adding the 'test' cases around the hydrate method - I have found use cases I didn't consider while writing the code - and have adjusted the code to reflect the behavior I expect.

You can find this repository on GitHub! This post might need some more work, feel free to ask questions or for updated instructions.  Thanks!