About Demeanor¶

Demeanor is PHP testing framework that supports several different test formats.

Specification Tests (SpecBDD)
Unit Tests
PHPT Tests

Contents¶

Getting Started¶

Demeanor can be installed with composer, please read the composer getting started page to learn how to get everything set up.

Once that’s done, add demeanor/demeanor to your require-dev dependencies in composer.json.

{
    "require-dev": {
        "demeanor/demeanor": "dev-master"
    }
}

Then run composer install or composer update with the --dev flag.

Configuration¶

Other documentation explains the demeanor.json configuration more fully, but, for now, we’re going to set up two test suites.

{
    "testsuites": {
        "unit": {
            "type": "unit",
            "directories": [
                "test/unit"
            ]
        },
        "spec": {
            "type": "spec",
            "directories": [
                "test/spec"
            ]
        }
    }
}

The testsuites argument is required and must be an object. If it’s not the test runner will complain.

The keys of the testsuites object are the suite names and the values are their configuration. type tells Demeanor what type of test suite its dealing with. Valid values are unit, spec, or phpt. directories tells the test run where to look for the test files. How Demeanor finds those files varies by suite type.

Assertions¶

Demeanor uses a library called Counterpart to deal with assertions. You’ll use the Counterpart\Assert class and call one of it’s assert* methods. The last argument of all assert* methods is a message that can be used to describe the business case or importances of the assertion.

Here are some examples:

<?php
use Counterpart\Assert;

Assert::assertTrue(true, 'True is somehow false, things are very broken');
Assert::assertFalse(false);
Assert::assertNull(null);
Assert::assertType('string', 'this is a string');

Your First Unit Test¶

Unit test cases are methods inside of a class. Every time a method is run, a new instance of it’s class is created.

Test class names must end with Test and test method must start with the word test. Demeanor will look for all files that end with Test.php in the directories defined in the directories configuration above.

<?php
// test/unit/TruthyTest.php

use Counterpart\Assert;

class TruthyTest
{
    public function testTruthyValuesReturnTrue()
    {
        Assert::assertTrue(filter_var('yes', FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN));
    }

    public function testFalsyValuesReturnFalse()
    {
        Assert::assertFalse(filter_var('no', FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN));
    }
}

Your First Spec Test¶

Spec tests use a describe and it API to to define a specification for an object. A specification is just a set of expected behaviors.

In demeanor, a spec test looks like this.

<?php
// filter_var.spec.php

use Counterpart\Assert;

/** @var Demeanor\Spec\Specification $this */
$this->describe('#truthyValues', function () {
    $this->it('should return true when given "yes"', function () {
        Assert::assertTrue(filter_var('yes', FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN));
    });
    $this->it('should return true when given a "1"', function () {
        Assert::assertTrue(filter_var(1, FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN));
    });
});

$this->describe('#falsyValues', function () {
    $this->it('should return false when given "no"', function () {
        Assert::assertFalse(filter_var('no', FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN));
    });
    $this->it('should return false when given "0"', function () {
        Assert::assertFalse(filter_var(0, FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN));
    });
});

Each call to it creates a new test case. When the directories argument is used for a spec test suite, all files that end with .spec.php are located and compiled to test cases.

See Writing Spec Tests for more information.

Running the Tests¶

A binary will be installed via composer in your bin-dir (vendor/bin by default). Once a configuration file and some tests are set up, use the command line to run php vendor/bin/demeanor or ./vendor/bin/demeanor to run the tests.

Need More Examples?¶

Demeanor uses itself to test – well, to test itself. Look in the test directory of the demeanor repository for a bunch more examples.