SimpleTest conversion

Moodle 2.3

Overview

Moodle 2.3 switched to PHPUnit as the recommended unit testing framework. SimpleTest support will be completely removed from Moodle 2.4.

The migration is pretty straightforward:

1. create new test file in `xxx/tests/yyy_test.php`
2. copy contents of the old test file
3. replace extends UnitTestCase with extends basic_testcase and extends UnitTestCaseUsingDatabase with extends advanced_testcase
4. move constructor code to setUp()
5. fix setUp() and tearDown() to be protected
6. fix assert syntax
7. add $this->resetAfterTest(); in advanced test cases that modify database
8. add missing global $CFG; for includes outside of testcase classes

Usually the tests using database can be significantly simplified, the performance in PHPUnit is also a lot better.

The old SimpleTest execution page is hidden in 2.3, if you want to execute the old tests go to http://www.example.com/admin/tool/unittest/index.php page on your server.

Assert differences

SimpleTest	PHPUnit	Notes
$this->assertEqual($expected, $actual)	$this->assertEquals($expected, $actual)
$this->assertNotEqual($expected, $actual)	$this->assertNotEquals($expected, $actual)
$this->assertWithinMargin($expected, $actual, $margin)	$this->assertEquals($expected, $actual, , $margin)
$this->assertIdentical($expected, $actual)	$this->assertSame($expected, $actual)
$this->assertNotIdentical($expected, $actual)	$this->assertNotSame($expected, $actual)
$this->assertTrue($actual)	$this->assertTrue((bool)$actual) $this->assertNotEmpty($actual)	SimpleTest converts parameter to bool
$this->assertFalse($actual)	$this->assertFalse((bool)$actual) $this->assertEmpty($actual)	SimpleTest converts parameter to bool
$this->assertIsA($actual, 'classname')	$this->assertInstanceOf('classname', $actual)	objects instances only
$this->assertIsA($actual, 'array')	$this->assertEquals('array', gettype($actual))	arrays only
$this->assertPattern($pattern, $string)	$this->assertRegExp($pattern, $string)
$this->assertNoPattern($pattern, $string)	$this->assertNotRegExp($pattern, $string)
$this->expectException(true)	$this->setExpectedException('exception_classname')	alternatively use phpdocs: @expectedException exception_classname
$this->expectError()	$this->setExpectedException('PHPUnit_Framework_Error')	alternatively use phpdocs: @expectedException PHPUnit_Framework_Error
various HTML expectations	$this->assertTag()

SimpleTest emulation

Some original SimpleTests can be executed directly via PHPUnit with minimal modifications (try adding global $CFG for includes outside of test case class).