10 best automated testing frameworks for PHP

Have you ever spent long hours debugging your PHP code? Well, for most programmers it’s probably not the most fascinating challenge, but there’s a solution that can help us shorten this tedious task. Automated testing can significantly improve the workflow of PHP development by allowing pre-written tests to drive the development process.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at 10 powerful automated testing frameworks For PHP you can use.

1. PHPUnit

PHPUnit is the best-known testing framework for writing Unit Tests for PHP apps. Unit tests take small portions of code called units and test them one by one. With the help of PHPUnit we can conduct test-driven development.

It can be used via the command line, and it provides us with a handy TestCase class that we can extend according to our needs. PHPUnit also allows developers to use pre-written assertion methods to assert that the app behaves a certain way.

2. Codeception

Codeception doesn’t only enable us to write Unit Tests, but also Functional and Acceptance Tests. These two latter tests the PHP app as a whole with all features tied together, not as units. Codeception allows us to enable and configure different modules according to our development needs.

It’s integrated with many PHP development frameworks such as Symfony2, Laravel4, Yii, Phalcon, and the Zend Framework. This means that we can use a PHP automation testing framework and a PHP development framework together to establish a superefficient development workflow.

3. Behat

Behat is a popular behaviour-driven PHP testing framework. The tests we can write with Behat look rather like stories than code. Behat uses the StoryBDD subtype of behaviour-driven development (the other subtype is SpecBDD).

The framework was inspired by the Cucumber project that’s a testing framework for the Ruby programming language.

4. PHPSpec

PHPSpec also follows the behaviour-driven testing approach, but its other subtype called SpecBDD. With PHPSpec we need to write the specifications first that describe how the application code will behave. It was also inspired by a Ruby testing framework called RSpec.

5. SimpleTest

SimpleTest is an easy-to-use PHP unit testing framework in Test-Driven Development style, it can be seen as an alternative for PHPUnit. SimpleTest supports SSL, forms, proxies, frames and basic authentication, and it allows us to test common PHP tasks quickly. For sample test cases check out the tutorials of the developer team.

6. Storyplayer

Storyplayer is a full-stack testing framework that makes it possible to write end-to-end tests for an entire platform. Storyplayer has support for creating and destroying test environments on demand. It follows the TDD testing approach, and allows us to write functional tests that can check an application as a whole.

7. Peridot

Peridot is a lightweight, extensible testing framework for PHP. It features an event-driven architecture that allows testers to easily customize the framework via plugins and reporters.

Peridot uses the describe-it syntax to establish a clear and readable testing language that clearly describes how our application code should behave.

8. Atoum

Atoum is an intuitive and modern PHP testing framework that allows us to run unit tests. It simplifies test development, and as it’s a young framework it makes use of some newer capabilities that were introduced in PHP 5.3 (it can‘t be used with older PHP versions) to provide us with a quick and easy-to-understand testing process.

Atoum ensures a high level of security during test execution, as it isolates each test method in its own PHP process.

9. Kahlan

Kahlan is a full-featured BDD testing framework that makes it possible to write Unit Tests using the describe-it syntax. It embraces the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) design principle. Kahlan requires at least PHP 5.5.

It has a small code base, it’s said to be about 10 times smaller than PHPUnit, and it has loads of features that provide us with an extensible and customizable testing workflow.

10. Selenium

Selenium is a sophisticated testing framework that automates browsers. This means it’s possible to write User Acceptance Tests that examine the entire app as a whole.

Selenium is a robust tool that has its own WebDriver API that can drive a browser natively as though a real user would use it either locally or on a remote machine. Selenium is an excellent tool for testing more mature web applications.

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