Writing PHPUnit tests

Moodle 2.3

Moodle PHPUnit integration is designed to allow easy adding of new tests. At the start of each test the state is automatically reset to fresh new installation (unless explicitly told not to reset).

Testcase classes

There are two basic test class that are supposed to used in all Moodle unit tests - basic_testcase and advanced_testcase.

basic_testcase

Very simple tests that do not modify database, dataroot or any PHP globals. It can be used for example when trying examples from the official PHPUnit tutorial.

advanced_testcase

Enhanced testcase class enhanced for easy testing of Moodle code.

There is a third testcase class that is specially designed for testing of our Moodle database layer, it should not be used for other purposes.

Generators

Tests that need to modify default installation may use generators to create new courses, users, etc. All examples on this page should be used from test methods of a test class derived from advanced_testcase.

Creating users

At the start of each test there are only two users present - guest and administrator. If you need to add more test accounts use:

 $user = $this->getDataGenerator->create_user();

You may also specify properties of the user account, for example:

 $user1 = $this->getDataGenerator->create_user(array('email'=>'user1@example.com', 'username'=>'user1');

by default no user is logged-in, use setUser() method to change current $USER value:

 $this->setUser($user1);

Guest and admin accounts have a shortcut methods:

 $this->setGuestUser();
 $this->setAdminUser();

Null can be used to set current user back to not-logged-in:

 $this->setUser(null);

Long tests

All standard test should execute as fast as possible. Tests that take a loner time to execute (>10s) or are otherwise expensive (such as querying external servers that might be flooded by all dev machines) should be execute only when PHPUNIT_LONGTEST is true. This constant can be set in phpunit.xml or directly in config.php.

See also

• PHPUnit integration