Mar 05

Test more PHP!

By div
No Comments
Tech

It’s not just an admonishment, it’s the name of a project I maintain at code.google.com.

test-more-php version 0.1 is out now and ready to help prevent hours of debugging with so little effort it’s ridiculous not to use it. The API is a direct port of the popular Perl Test-More library with some minor PHP adaptations. Both object and procedural interfaces are available, so pick your flavor and get coding!

I started test-more-php after getting sucked into writing PHP full-time and casting about for a testing library with the elegance I knew from Test-More. Eventually I discovered a few, but each was incomplete or failed me by silently bailing on an error that could have been reported appropriately. Test-More.php is a drop-in replacement for those other libraries and provides me with the confidence that, if something goes wrong, I will know about it.

I’ve tested it under Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, FreeBSD and Cygwin but not OS X, so if anyone with a Mac wants to take it for a spin please let me know how if it passes all it’s tests. (Of course it comes with its own test suite!)

The title of this post at dagolden.com really struck me. The post, about a new CPAN client that doesn’t mimic the “swiss army chainsaw” mentality of the Perl community’s approach to software design, is apt in its critique not only of the project itself, but of its reception by the community. There is a religious type zeal some people express when shifting their allegiance from one idea to another that seems to compel them to attack the subject of their former allegiance.