Testing overview¶
PHP has an extensive test suite with over 15,000 individual test files. The test files are run with PHP’s black-box testing tool called run-tests.php which can be found in the root directory of the php source code.
“But wait!” you say, “I heard that PHP source doesn’t have any unit tests.” You are correct. The PHP source code has
zero unit tests. But it does have functional tests and lucky for us, these particular functional tests are written in
PHP. The test files have a .phpt file extension and can be run just like any normal PHP file.
The official documentation for writing phpt tests lives at qa.php.net.
Black-box testing¶
In a nutshell, black-box testing sends input to some function and examines the output after the function has finished
execution. If the output matches what we were expecting, then the test has passed. Black-box testing doesn’t care how
something is done, it only cares about the end result. This is exactly how run-tests.php works; it takes a set of
inputs, runs some PHP code and then examines the output. If the output matches what is expected, then the test passes.
Where the test files live¶
The test files live in several different places throughout the codebase in folders named tests. Each test folder
contains .phpt files pertaining to its containing folder’s code.
ext/{extension-name}/tests/Extension testssapi/{sapi-name}/tests/SAPI testsZend/tests/Zend engine teststests/More Zend engine tests
