moodle/lib/phpunit

PHPUnit testing support in Moodle

Documentation

• Moodle Dev wiki
• PHPUnit online documentaion
• MDL-32323, MDL-32149, MDL-31857

Installation

1. install PHPUnit PEAR extension - see PHPUnit docs for more details
2. edit main config.php - add $CFG->phpunit_prefix and $CFG->phpunit_dataroot - see config-dist.php for more details
3. execute admin/tool/phpunit/cli/init.sh initialise test database and dataroot
4. it is necessary to reinitialise the test database manually after every upgrade or installation of new plugins

Test execution

• execute phpunit shell command from dirroot directory
• you can also execute a single test phpunit core_phpunit_basic_testcase lib/tests/phpunit_test.php
• or all tests in one directory phpunit --configuration phpunit.xml lib/tests/*_test.php
• it is possible to create custom configuration files in xml format and use phpunit -c myconfig.xml

How to add more tests?

1. create tests directory in your plugin if does not already exist
2. add *_test.php files with custom class that extends basic_testcase or advanced_testcase
3. execute your new test, for example phpunit core_phpunit_basic_testcase local/mytest/tests/mytest_test.php
4. optionally build new phpunit.xml by executing php admin/tool/phpunit/cli/util.php --buildconfig and run all tests
5. core developers have to add all core unit test locations to phpunit.xml.dist

How to convert existing tests?

1. create new test file in xxx/tests/yyy_test.php
2. copy contents of the old test file
3. replace extends UnitTestCase with extends basic_testcase
4. fix setUp, tearDown, asserts, etc.
5. some old SimpleTest tests can be executed directly - mocking, database operations, assert(), etc. does not work, you may need to add global $CFG; before includes

FAQs

• Why is it necessary to execute the tests from the command line? PHPUnit is designed to be executed from shell, existing Moodle globals and constants would interfere with it.
• Why tests subdirectory? It is very unlikely that it will collide with any plugin name because plugin names use singular form.
• Why is it necessary to include core and plugin suites in configuration files? PHPUnit does not seem to allow dynamic loading of tests from our dir structure.

TODO

• add plugin callbacks to data generator
• convert remaining tests
• delete all simpletests
• hide old SimpleTests in UI and delete Functional DB tests