One of the tedious task that PHP developers do is to debug the PHP code. Well, when you hire PHP developer, it may or may not be the same challenge, but there’s always a solution that can help them to shorten this debugging task.
Here, I am talking about automated testing for PHP code that can conveniently help developers to enhance PHP development workflow- by driving the process with pre-written tests.
Why do you need to test your PHP code?
Every PHP developer begins their career by testing different functions and new features he just wrote in browser window, and when code doesn’t respond the way it should we stay clueless about how to fix it.
Writing tests on your own will consume a lot of time and effort. Not many experts choose to perform the same- but when untested code is executed, the results won’t be so nice. So what can you do?
Probably the sole solution is to look for a productive testing workflow where we can easily write own testing code that analyzes our application’s code from the accuracy point of view. To stay on the proper track, the best idea to write the testing code even before you start with your PHP application code.
The testing code will remain in the separate file and can easily be called off when faced with any errors in our PHP application. Whenever bumped into any kind of error in code execution, we simply need to run our saved test that will facilitate us proper hints about problems.
Writing the tests before App code production will also bring below-mentioned advantages, like:
- enhanced performance,
- saves you time and headache,
- expedited refactoring,
- easy to maintain code,
- Minimal distended code with fewer security issues.
Automated Testing for your PHP application Code
As mentioned earlier in this post, we can write tests on our own and save them for later use. However, it can be a tedious task sometimes, with multiple repetitive actions. To avoid any kind of inconvenience, you can replace manual testing with automated testing where you can simply rely on specific software that will do this time-consuming task for you.
And,
PHP developers that you hire can easily spend enough time developing other logics required in the testing.
Two Approaches followed: Test-driven development and Behaviour-driven development
One similarity between these two approaches is the development process is driven by testing, which means you need to write tests before commencing the application code. However, the flow differs in the syntax of testing code.
TDD or test-driven development uses proper PHP code while the behavior-driven approach uses human-readable sentences that illustrate the behavior of each feature. This kind of process is apprehensible by non-technical stakeholders also.
Best PHP Automated Testing Frameworks
With that being said, let’s have a look at some powerful automated PHP testing frameworks that you can use.
PHPUnit
PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented PHP testing framework that is quite popular for writing Unit Tests for PHP apps. It involves taking smaller portions of your application code and test each one individually for accurate execution.
PHPSpec
This automated testing framework supports Behaviour-driven development approach for writing clean and responsive PHP code. Its foundation is built on test-first development that means you need to write down the specifications first, to decide the flow of your code.
It is quite useful while aiming for well-designed and readable code. Best use in testing small units of code rather all edges of cases.
Codeception
With this automated testing framework, you wouldn’t only write Unit tests, but also Acceptance and Functional tests. The latter ones are useful to test the whole PHP app features collectively, instead of smaller units.
Codeception is integrated with many PHP development frameworks like Laravel4, Symfony2, and Zend. That means you can use test and development framework collectively.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Since PHP is a globally used language to built applications, it’s important to stay abreast of testing code with proper use of automated testing frameworks. The market is flooded with multiple PHP automated testing frameworks you can easily choose one that is convenient for your business needs.
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