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The PHPUnit Bridge

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Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 7.2 (the current stable version).

The PHPUnit Bridge provides utilities to report legacy tests and usage of deprecated code and a helper for time and network-sensitive tests.

It comes with the following features:

  • Forces the tests to use a consistent locale (C) (if you create locale-sensitive tests, use PHPUnit's setLocale() method);
  • Auto-register class_exists to load Doctrine annotations (when used);
  • It displays the whole list of deprecated features used in the application;
  • Displays the stack trace of a deprecation on-demand;
  • Provides a ClockMock and DnsMock helper classes for time and network-sensitive tests;
  • Provides a modified version of PHPUnit that does not embed symfony/yaml nor prophecy to prevent any conflicts with these dependencies;

Installation

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$ composer require --dev "symfony/phpunit-bridge:*"

Note

If you install this component outside of a Symfony application, you must require the vendor/autoload.php file in your code to enable the class autoloading mechanism provided by Composer. Read this article for more details.

Note

The PHPUnit bridge is designed to work with all maintained versions of Symfony components, even across different major versions of them. You should always use its very latest stable major version to get the most accurate deprecation report.

If you plan to The PHPUnit Bridge and use the regular PHPUnit script (not the modified PHPUnit script provided by Symfony), you have to register a new test listener called SymfonyTestsListener:

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<!-- http://phpunit.de/manual/6.0/en/appendixes.configuration.html -->
<phpunit xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="https://schema.phpunit.de/6.0/phpunit.xsd"
>

    <!-- ... -->

    <listeners>
        <listener class="Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\SymfonyTestsListener"/>
    </listeners>
</phpunit>

Usage

See also

This article explains how to use the PhpUnitBridge features as an independent component in any PHP application. Read the Testing article to learn about how to use it in Symfony applications.

Once the component is installed, a simple-phpunit script is created in the vendor/ directory to run tests. This script wraps the original PHPUnit binary to provide more features:

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$ cd my-project/
$ ./vendor/bin/simple-phpunit

After running your PHPUnit tests, you will get a report similar to this one:

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$ phpunit -c app
  PHPUnit by Sebastian Bergmann.

  Configuration read from <your-project>/app/phpunit.xml.dist
  .................

  Time: 1.77 seconds, Memory: 5.75Mb

  OK (17 tests, 21 assertions)

  Remaining deprecation notices (2)

  getEntityManager is deprecated since Symfony 2.1. Use getManager instead: 2x
    1x in DefaultControllerTest::testPublicUrls from AppBundle\Tests\Controller
    1x in BlogControllerTest::testIndex from AppBundle\Tests\Controller

The summary includes:

Unsilenced
Reports deprecation notices that were triggered without the recommended @-silencing operator.
Legacy
Deprecation notices denote tests that explicitly test some legacy features.
Remaining/Other
Deprecation notices are all other (non-legacy) notices, grouped by message, test class and method.

Note

If you don't want to use the simple-phpunit script, register the following PHPUnit event listener in your PHPUnit configuration file to get the same report about deprecations (which is created by a PHP error handler called DeprecationErrorHandler):

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<!-- phpunit.xml.dist -->
<!-- ... -->
<listeners>
    <listener class="Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\SymfonyTestsListener"/>
</listeners>

Running Tests in Parallel

The modified PHPUnit script allows running tests in parallel by providing a directory containing multiple test suites with their own phpunit.xml.dist.

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├── tests/
│   ├── Functional/
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── phpunit.xml.dist
│   ├── Unit/
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── phpunit.xml.dist
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$ ./vendor/bin/simple-phpunit tests/

The modified PHPUnit script will recursively go through the provided directory, up to a depth of 3 subdirectories or the value specified by the environment variable SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_MAX_DEPTH, looking for phpunit.xml.dist files and then running each suite it finds in parallel, collecting their output and displaying each test suite's results in their own section.

Trigger Deprecation Notices

Deprecation notices can be triggered by using:

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@trigger_error('Your deprecation message', E_USER_DEPRECATED);

Without the @-silencing operator, users would need to opt-out from deprecation notices. Silencing by default swaps this behavior and allows users to opt-in when they are ready to cope with them (by adding a custom error handler like the one provided by this bridge). When not silenced, deprecation notices will appear in the Unsilenced section of the deprecation report.

Mark Tests as Legacy

There are three ways to mark a test as legacy:

  • (Recommended) Add the @group legacy annotation to its class or method;
  • Make its class name start with the Legacy prefix;
  • Make its method name start with testLegacy*() instead of test*().

Note

If your data provider calls code that would usually trigger a deprecation, you can prefix its name with provideLegacy or getLegacy to silence these deprecations. If your data provider does not execute deprecated code, it is not required to choose a special naming just because the test being fed by the data provider is marked as legacy.

Also be aware that choosing one of the two legacy prefixes will not mark tests as legacy that make use of this data provider. You still have to mark them as legacy tests explicitly.

Configuration

In case you need to inspect the stack trace of a particular deprecation triggered by your unit tests, you can set the SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER environment variable to a regular expression that matches this deprecation's message, enclosed with /. For example, with:

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<!-- http://phpunit.de/manual/6.0/en/appendixes.configuration.html -->
<phpunit xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="https://schema.phpunit.de/6.0/phpunit.xsd"
>

    <!-- ... -->

    <php>
        <server name="KERNEL_DIR" value="app/"/>
        <env name="SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER" value="/foobar/"/>
    </php>
</phpunit>

PHPUnit will stop your test suite once a deprecation notice is triggered whose message contains the "foobar" string.

Making Tests Fail

By default, any non-legacy-tagged or any non-`@-silenced`_ deprecation notices will make tests fail. Alternatively, setting SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER to an arbitrary value (ex: 320) will make the tests fails only if a higher number of deprecation notices is reached (0 is the default value). You can also set the value "weak" which will make the bridge ignore any deprecation notices. This is useful to projects that must use deprecated interfaces for backward compatibility reasons.

When you maintain a library, having the test suite fail as soon as a dependency introduces a new deprecation is not desirable, because it shifts the burden of fixing that deprecation to any contributor that happens to submit a pull request shortly after a new vendor release is made with that deprecation. To mitigate this, you can either use tighter requirements, in the hope that dependencies will not introduce deprecations in a patch version, or even commit the Composer lock file, which would create another class of issues. Libraries will often use SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER=weak because of this. This has the drawback of allowing contributions that introduce deprecations but:

  • forget to fix the deprecated calls if there are any;
  • forget to mark appropriate tests with the @group legacy annotations.

By using the "weak_vendors" value, deprecations that are triggered outside the vendors directory will make the test suite fail, while deprecations triggered from a library inside it will not, giving you the best of both worlds.

Disabling the Deprecation Helper

Set the SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER environment variable to disabled to completely disable the deprecation helper. This is useful to make use of the rest of features provided by this component without getting errors or messages related to deprecations.

Write Assertions about Deprecations

When adding deprecations to your code, you might like writing tests that verify that they are triggered as required. To do so, the bridge provides the @expectedDeprecation annotation that you can use on your test methods. It requires you to pass the expected message, given in the same format as for the PHPUnit's assertStringMatchesFormat() method. If you expect more than one deprecation message for a given test method, you can use the annotation several times (order matters):

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/**
 * @group legacy
 * @expectedDeprecation This "%s" method is deprecated.
 * @expectedDeprecation The second argument of the "%s" method is deprecated.
 */
public function testDeprecatedCode()
{
    @trigger_error('This "Foo" method is deprecated.', E_USER_DEPRECATED);
    @trigger_error('The second argument of the "Bar" method is deprecated.', E_USER_DEPRECATED);
}

Display the Full Stack Trace

By default, the PHPUnit Bridge displays only deprecation messages. To show the full stack trace related to a deprecation, set the value of SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER to a regular expression matching the deprecation message.

For example, if the following deprecation notice is thrown:

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1x: Doctrine\Common\ClassLoader is deprecated.
  1x in EntityTypeTest::setUp from Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Tests\Form\Type

Running the following command will display the full stack trace:

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$ SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER='/Doctrine\\Common\\ClassLoader is deprecated\./' ./vendor/bin/simple-phpunit

Time-sensitive Tests

Use Case

If you have this kind of time-related tests:

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use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use Symfony\Component\Stopwatch\Stopwatch;

class MyTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testSomething()
    {
        $stopwatch = new Stopwatch();

        $stopwatch->start('event_name');
        sleep(10);
        $duration = $stopwatch->stop('event_name')->getDuration();

        $this->assertEquals(10000, $duration);
    }
}

You used the Symfony Stopwatch Component to calculate the duration time of your process, here 10 seconds. However, depending on the load of the server or the processes running on your local machine, the $duration could for example be 10.000023s instead of 10s.

This kind of tests are called transient tests: they are failing randomly depending on spurious and external circumstances. They are often cause trouble when using public continuous integration services like Travis CI.

Clock Mocking

The ClockMock class provided by this bridge allows you to mock the PHP's built-in time functions time(), microtime(), sleep(), usleep() and gmdate(). Additionally the function date() is mocked so it uses the mocked time if no timestamp is specified.

Other functions with an optional timestamp parameter that defaults to time() will still use the system time instead of the mocked time. This means that you may need to change some code in your tests. For example, instead of new DateTime(), you should use DateTime::createFromFormat('U', time()) to use the mocked time() function.

To use the ClockMock class in your test, add the @group time-sensitive annotation to its class or methods. This annotation only works when executing PHPUnit using the vendor/bin/simple-phpunit script or when registering the following listener in your PHPUnit configuration:

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<!-- phpunit.xml.dist -->
<!-- ... -->
<listeners>
    <listener class="\Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\SymfonyTestsListener"/>
</listeners>

Note

If you don't want to use the @group time-sensitive annotation, you can register the ClockMock class manually by calling ClockMock::register(__CLASS__) and ClockMock::withClockMock(true) before the test and ClockMock::withClockMock(false) after the test.

As a result, the following is guaranteed to work and is no longer a transient test:

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use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use Symfony\Component\Stopwatch\Stopwatch;

/**
 * @group time-sensitive
 */
class MyTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testSomething()
    {
        $stopwatch = new Stopwatch();

        $stopwatch->start('event_name');
        sleep(10);
        $duration = $stopwatch->stop('event_name')->getDuration();

        $this->assertEquals(10000, $duration);
    }
}

And that's all!

Caution

Time-based function mocking follows the PHP namespace resolutions rules so "fully qualified function calls" (e.g \time()) cannot be mocked.

The @group time-sensitive annotation is equivalent to calling ClockMock::register(MyTest::class). If you want to mock a function used in a different class, do it explicitly using ClockMock::register(MyClass::class):

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// the class that uses the time() function to be mocked
namespace App;

class MyClass
{
    public function getTimeInHours()
    {
        return time() / 3600;
    }
}

// the test that mocks the external time() function explicitly
namespace App\Tests;

use App\MyClass;
use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\ClockMock;

/**
 * @group time-sensitive
 */
class MyTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testGetTimeInHours()
    {
        ClockMock::register(MyClass::class);

        $my = new MyClass();
        $result = $my->getTimeInHours();

        $this->assertEquals(time() / 3600, $result);
    }
}

Tip

An added bonus of using the ClockMock class is that time passes instantly. Using PHP's sleep(10) will make your test wait for 10 actual seconds (more or less). In contrast, the ClockMock class advances the internal clock the given number of seconds without actually waiting that time, so your test will execute 10 seconds faster.

DNS-sensitive Tests

Tests that make network connections, for example to check the validity of a DNS record, can be slow to execute and unreliable due to the conditions of the network. For that reason, this component also provides mocks for these PHP functions:

Use Case

Consider the following example that uses the checkMX option of the Email constraint to test the validity of the email domain:

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use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\Email;

class MyTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testEmail()
    {
        $validator = ...
        $constraint = new Email(['checkMX' => true]);

        $result = $validator->validate('foo@example.com', $constraint);

        // ...
    }
}

In order to avoid making a real network connection, add the @dns-sensitive annotation to the class and use the DnsMock::withMockedHosts() to configure the data you expect to get for the given hosts:

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use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\Email;

/**
 * @group dns-sensitive
 */
class MyTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testEmails()
    {
        DnsMock::withMockedHosts(['example.com' => [['type' => 'MX']]]);

        $validator = ...
        $constraint = new Email(['checkMX' => true]);

        $result = $validator->validate('foo@example.com', $constraint);

        // ...
    }
}

The withMockedHosts() method configuration is defined as an array. The keys are the mocked hosts and the values are arrays of DNS records in the same format returned by dns_get_record, so you can simulate diverse network conditions:

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DnsMock::withMockedHosts([
    'example.com' => [
        [
            'type' => 'A',
            'ip' => '1.2.3.4',
        ],
        [
            'type' => 'AAAA',
            'ipv6' => '::12',
        ],
    ],
]);

Troubleshooting

The @group time-sensitive and @group dns-sensitive annotations work "by convention" and assume that the namespace of the tested class can be obtained just by removing the Tests\ part from the test namespace. I.e. if your test cases fully-qualified class name (FQCN) is App\Tests\Watch\DummyWatchTest, it assumes the tested class namespace is App\Watch.

If this convention doesn't work for your application, configure the mocked namespaces in the phpunit.xml file, as done for example in the HttpKernel Component:

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<!-- http://phpunit.de/manual/4.1/en/appendixes.configuration.html -->
<phpunit xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="https://schema.phpunit.de/4.1/phpunit.xsd"
>

    <!-- ... -->

    <listeners>
        <listener class="Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\SymfonyTestsListener">
            <arguments>
                <array>
                    <element key="time-sensitive"><string>Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation</string></element>
                </array>
            </arguments>
        </listener>
    </listeners>
</phpunit>

Under the hood, a PHPUnit listener injects the mocked functions in the tested classes' namespace. In order to work as expected, the listener has to run before the tested class ever runs. By default, the mocked functions are created when the annotation are found and the corresponding tests are run. Depending on how your tests are constructed, this might be too late. In this case, you will need to declare the namespaces of the tested classes in your phpunit.xml.dist.

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<!-- phpunit.xml.dist -->
<!-- ... -->
<listeners>
    <listener class="Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\SymfonyTestsListener">
            <arguments>
                <array>
                    <element key="time-sensitive"><string>Acme\MyClassTest</string></element>
                </array>
            </arguments>
        </listener>
</listeners>

Modified PHPUnit script

3.2

This modified PHPUnit script was introduced in the 3.2 version of this component.

This bridge provides a modified version of PHPUnit that you can call by using its bin/simple-phpunit command. It has the following features:

  • Does not embed symfony/yaml nor prophecy to prevent any conflicts with these dependencies;
  • Uses PHPUnit 4.8 when run with PHP <=5.5, PHPUnit 5.7 when run with PHP >=5.6 and PHPUnit 6.5 when run with PHP >=7.2;
  • Collects and replays skipped tests when the SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_SKIPPED_TESTS env var is defined: the env var should specify a file name that will be used for storing skipped tests on a first run, and replay them on the second run;
  • Parallelizes test suites execution when given a directory as argument, scanning this directory for phpunit.xml.dist files up to SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_MAX_DEPTH levels (specified as an env var, defaults to 3);

The script writes the modified PHPUnit it builds in a directory that can be configured by the SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_DIR env var, or in the same directory as the simple-phpunit if it is not provided.

If you have installed the bridge through Composer, you can run it by calling e.g.:

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$ vendor/bin/simple-phpunit

Tip

It's possible to change the base version of PHPUnit by setting the SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_VERSION env var in the phpunit.xml.dist file (e.g. <server name="SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_VERSION" value="5.5"/>). This is the preferred method as it can be committed to your version control repository.

It's also possible to set SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_VERSION as a real env var (not defined in a dotenv file).

Tip

If you still need to use prophecy (but not symfony/yaml), then set the SYMFONY_PHPUNIT_REMOVE env var to symfony/yaml.

Code Coverage Listener

By default, the code coverage is computed with the following rule: if a line of code is executed, then it is marked as covered. The test which executes a line of code is therefore marked as "covering the line of code". This can be misleading.

Consider the following example:

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class Bar
{
    public function barMethod()
    {
        return 'bar';
    }
}

class Foo
{
    private $bar;

    public function __construct(Bar $bar)
    {
        $this->bar = $bar;
    }

    public function fooMethod()
    {
        $this->bar->barMethod();

        return 'bar';
    }
}

class FooTest extends PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase
{
    public function test()
    {
        $bar = new Bar();
        $foo = new Foo($bar);

        $this->assertSame('bar', $foo->fooMethod());
    }
}

The FooTest::test method executes every single line of code of both Foo and Bar classes, but Bar is not truly tested. The CoverageListener aims to fix this behavior by adding the appropriate @covers annotation on each test class.

If a test class already defines the @covers annotation, this listener does nothing. Otherwise, it tries to find the code related to the test by removing the Test part of the classname: My\Namespace\Tests\FooTest -> My\Namespace\Foo.

Installation

Add the following configuration to the phpunit.xml.dist file:

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<!-- http://phpunit.de/manual/6.0/en/appendixes.configuration.html -->
<phpunit xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="https://schema.phpunit.de/6.0/phpunit.xsd"
>

    <!-- ... -->

    <listeners>
        <listener class="Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\CoverageListener"/>
    </listeners>
</phpunit>

If the logic used to find the related code is too simple or doesn't work for your application, you can use your own SUT (System Under Test) solver:

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<listeners>
    <listener class="Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\CoverageListener">
        <arguments>
            <string>My\Namespace\SutSolver::solve</string>
        </arguments>
    </listener>
</listeners>

The My\Namespace\SutSolver::solve can be any PHP callable and receives the current test as its first argument.

Finally, the listener can also display warning messages when the SUT solver does not find the SUT:

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<listeners>
    <listener class="Symfony\Bridge\PhpUnit\CoverageListener">
        <arguments>
            <null/>
            <boolean>true</boolean>
        </arguments>
    </listener>
</listeners>
This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.
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