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PHPUnit tests and WP-CLI

Published Jan 18, 2018

I recently discovered an easy way to add unit tests to my plugins. I’ve been using WP-CLI for years now to set up new local installs of WordPress and found out it has a command specifically for setting up PHPUnit for plugins. This post is partially for my future self so I can remember how to do all this. FYI, I’m on a Mac, so all the commands will be OS X-specific.

Install and Configure PHPUnit

Start by installing PHPUnit using Homebrew:

brew install phpunit

That installs the latest version of PHPUnit and makes it ready to use with the global keyword “phpunit”.

Next, use WP-CLI to setup the test suites and such needed for PHPUnit. I recommend running this command from the plugin’s directory.

wp scaffold plugin-tests my-plugin

Replace the “my-plugin” part with your plugin name.

If you aren’t already in your plugin directory, change to that now. Then you’ll run the installation bash script.

bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root '' localhost latest

Notes about this command:

Once you’ve run this script, you’re ready to start writing tests and running them using the ‘phpunit’ command. Here’s the rub though: the script installs WordPress and the testing suite in the /tmp directory. Why is that a problem? On my computer, at least, the /tmp directory removes anything installed there upon reboot. Which means I need to re-run the tests bash script every time I reboot the computer.

Since we developers prefer not repeating ourselves, here’s how to configure things for a more permanent solution.

Solution

What I’m advising here is to move the stuff installed in /tmp to somewhere else, then fix all the references so they still work. So, run all of the above, then navigate to your /tmp folder. Move the /wordpress and /wordpress-tests-lib folders to another location outside the /tmp folder. I moved mine into a directory called unittests in my Dropbox folder.

Go to your Home folder and either open or create the .bash_profile file. You’ll probably need to tell Finder to show Hidden files first. In your .bash_profile file, add the following line, using your new directory location:

export WP_TESTS_DIR="/Your/New/Folder/Location/unittests/wordpress-tests-lib"

This line tells the PHPUnit bootstrap.php file where to find the test WordPress install and test suite files.

Now, go to the wordpress-tests-lib directory and open the wp-tests-config.php file. Edit the ABSPATH constant to the ‘/wordpress’ directory you copied over from /tmp earlier. Something like:

define('ABSPATH', '/Your/New/Folder/Location/unittests/wordpress//');

Save the file and reboot your computer. Now, the tests setup by WP-CLI know where the testing WordPress is located, it doesn’t disappear when you install updates or reboot, and you can create and run PHPUnit tests for your plugins!

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