As Test Driven Development continues to gain steam and buzzes around the world of software development, how do you see it playing in PHP? How important is it to you? Have you adopted and now love it, or have you tried and abandoned developer testing in general? Or are you still on the fence not knowing which way to go?
Noting the effort going into the test classes for Zend Framework and the comments on Chris Shifflet’s recent blog post on testing it is clear that there is a place and need for testing in PHP. What isn’t clear is how far to go and what model to use: Do you test first? Or do you test soon after? Do you test when in trouble? Or do you test to prevent trouble? What testing framework do you use? How do you group your test suites? How often do you run the tests?
So we ask, how does testing in PHP work for you? Share your comments and ideas and we will respond with helpful articles on progressing your testing skills in PHP.
In the meantime you can also answer a challenge if you live near Chicago, IL. The organizers of the Continuous Integration Testing Conference asked me if PHP would be represented at their conference. So if you are into CI and testing, go join them for free on April 7th and 8th at the Crowne Plaza Metro in Chicago, IL and answer their call for diversity in their attendees.
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TheServerSite.NET had a recent article about a poll that was performed across 490 participants asking about unit testing. The results:
Now, it is the most natural thing and what I realize is that when I was developing iteratively without tests, I was still testing but I was throwing all all the intellectual property at the end of each manual test. So, with test driven development, and writing your test first, you are basically saying that the intellectual property of testing is so important, you really want to keep it.
I've put together an article about lessons I've learned in test driven development at http://homepage.mac.com/hey.you