PHPUnit: Testing with a Bite

Hey Coder!

That's an excellent conversation ;). I'm somewhere in the middle. What your friend is saying is VERY fair: by using mocks, you're really asserting how the "internal" of the function works. And, in theory, all you should *really* be worrying about is: if I pass argument A, I get return value B. You shouldn't - in theory - care at all *how* the function works internally. That's why, yes, using mocks will cause your tests to fail more often unnecessarily. For example, you might do some innocent refactoring of a method (where you don't change how it actually works) and your test breaks because you now call a method 1 time instead of 2.

So, I typically avoid mocks... until they're useful ;). For example, if I call a method and *one* of the things it does is save something to the database with Doctrine... and it's *critically* important that this is actually saved, I *will* assert that persist() and flush() were called. There's not really a nice way to assert that based on some return value.

All a long way of saying: your friend definitely has a point, and it's really cool to think critically about trying to test what you need to, but also try not "over-managing" *exactly* how a function is doing its job. But, at the end of the day, if you avoid using mocks, and you're still scared that your method might not be working correctly (what if I forget to persist() & flush()???), then mock. That's just my pragmatic view of things :).

Cheers!

Hello, I had discussion with one guy and he says he uses mostly stubs instead of mocks because stubs do not break tests so much when things change. I am now researching more info on this. But you could make a video about this.
I argue that I need to test that method was called for example once with specific arguments. Otherwise test should fail. He says I should do that with with return values. Like if method is called with X argument, it should return Y, if method is called with A argument, it should return B, and then I assert return value and so I know that method has been called with right arguments. And only test that that method is called with right argument when the method does not return values.

I am not sure if that will be beneficial because I am not sure if readability will become worse. But if lets say we change tested method name or class name, the test will break anyway. So where is the benefit? Plus when you read the test - there will be arguments and return values - and will this be readable when intention will be to check if the right method is called with right arguments.

Just came here after noticing a link in the Design Pattern course thread.

Hey Chmlls,

Good catch! Looks like this course wasn't added to any track, so it's our fault. We'll fix it soon. However, you can find ALL courses even those that mistakenly were not added to any track here: https://symfonycasts.com/co...

Cheers!

I love all your tutorials!
One question, in which category is this course in? I found it by searching TDD but I didn't see it in any course.

I'm wondering If I'm missing some other good tutorials that are not categorized.

Hi again Irfan!

Yep, this course is for you: the PHP dev who hasn't tested before. We *do* use Symfony in this tutorial. But, for many parts of it, it's not relevant. Unit testing is done the exact same way regardless of your framework. This is true because unit tests don't even touch your framework or know that it exists :). Later in the tutorial, when we talk about integration tests and functional tests, these *do* interact with your framework, and are Symfony-specific (though, the concepts apply to any framework).

So, based on what you've told me so far, if you're excited to learn about testing, I think (hope) that you'll learn a ton with this tutorial :).

Cheers!

Hey Diego Aguiar
Thank you very much for your reply. I am familiar with OOPHP but I never wrote automated test and secondly, I am not familiar with Symfony. I used Laravel few times for small projects. Having said, Do you think its a good idea to take this course ? Thanks in advance :)

That's exactly why we have that feature :). Everyone has different knowledge and different English mastery. I also watch in fast forward on other sites too sometimes ;)

good that there is a feature to run videos 1.25x or faster, using it really often :) without it, when you know lot of things, it would be boring waste of time. But I watch those at fast speed, maybe I will notice something what I do not know.

Thank you for a wonderful course. One of the best on KnpU.

Once again you have created a wonderful tutorial that I enjoyed very much! Thank you and I love the humor.

Hey Irfan
If you mean beginner to testing, then yes :)
This course is not that complex, but at least you need to be familiar with PHP and OO concepts
To your question "Are you guys using any PHP framework?", yes, we show you how to test with PHPUnit, it's a very good open source framework, and actually we use it here in KnpU.

Cheers!

Is this course for absolute beginner ? I never tested my code before. Are you guys using any PHP framework ?

Hey Simon,

Haha, no problem! I just explained our complex workflow a bit ;) On the other hand I totally understand you, it'd be cool to watch as many videos at once as you want and take a break when you want :)

Cheers!

Thanks Victor. It was not a criticism, just a question and your strategy serves everyone, like you say, I can just wait, but I think I will still watch them as they come out they are like a box of chocolates, you eat them as soon as you see them.

Hey Simon,

We want to deliver our content as soon as possible to our users, i.e. we publish new videos right after they are ready. It depends, but most of the time we are able to process 1 video per day. It's a complex process, we need to recode video, record audio, then make them both together and add some special effects like a cool animation, video notes, etc. So we *can* release an entire course at once, but then you need to wait a few weeks when we record and process all the videos in this course. But as I said, we chose a different strategy - release new videos as soon as they are ready. If you want to see the entire course in the same breath, take a break and return in a few weeks, I think to that time almost all the videos will be released. Thanks for understanding!

Cheers!

Is it normal that we get one video per day? or will we see a few all at once?

Great! Thanks weaverryan!

Yo Wil Iglesias!

Haha, well then I have good news :). We will finish our Ansistrano tutorial (over the next couple of weeks) and then PHPUnit will be right after that. So, I expect it to start being released this month!

Cheers!

Hi Ryan! When will the PHPUnit tutorial come out? Because it's just what I've been waiting for to improve my superpowers ;)

Haha "the usual question" :). Yes indeed! I hope over the next few months we'll start to be able to give concrete estimates very early on - our process is actually quite solid and predictable these days (woo!).

Cheers!

I would give a rough guess that it should be published 1-3 months before the year ends (it's right now in coding stages), but there always might be some unplanned issues delaying it.

Hey Mehdi,

Sorry, we don't have any ETA because this course is on early planning stage yet, but you can track it here: https://knpuniversity.com/c... or press "Notify me when course is available" and we'll email you ;)

Cheers!

Hi, This is really what I need. let me be the first to ask the usual question :)
any ETA yet?

Yes! Just in time, I was waiting for this <3