Comments on: Static + Unit Tests = Arrrghhh!

By: lejoe

lejoe — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:55:52 +0000

And patrice suggested me today to read this one : http://misko.hevery.com/2008/08/17/singletons-are-pathological-liars/

Really simple to understand and really helpfull

By: Maarten Manders’ Blog: Static + Unit Tests = Arrrghhh! | Development Blog With Code Updates : Developercast.com

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:26:39 +0000

[...] a hint from Maarten Manders when renaming and moving around your unit testing order: It’s [...]

By: Daniel O'Connor

Daniel O'Connor — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:02:27 +0000

Force other people to read about:

http://misko.hevery.com/2008/07/08/how-to-think-about-the-new-operator/

and

http://misko.hevery.com/2008/07/30/top-10-things-which-make-your-code-hard-to-test/

Apply stick liberally.

By: Sebastian Bergmann

Sebastian Bergmann — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:51:32 +0000

There is a branch in PHPUnit’s Subversion repository that runs each test in a separate PHP process. This branch will be merged for either PHPUnit 3.4 or PHPUnit 4.0.

You can also follow Lukas’ advice and write your tests that exercise static methods as PHPT — and run those through PHPUnit. PHPUnit’s own test suite is a good example of a mix between PHPUnit and PHPT tests.

By: lejoe

lejoe — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:07:58 +0000

And you can beat your singleton with this : http://paste.pocoo.org/show/81547/ and use $forcereload for tests

By: troelskn

troelskn — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:04:02 +0000

So first you ask for a stick, and in the next sentence you ask for a way to hide from it? Doesn’t make much sense to me.

Your tests are speaking to you. They are saying “Please don’t use global variables, you are hurting us”. Listen to them.

By: lejoe

lejoe — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:59:44 +0000

I find writing tests are one of the challenging part of programming and not boring at all! It’s the moment where you set fails that you are going to fight afterwards with your code!

Never had much problem with tests dependencies. A good use of setUp and teardDown and testing only one function (even one use case of a function) per test really makes it.

Good luck

By: Lars Strojny

Lars Strojny — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:39:16 +0000

1.) Have a continuous integration solution in place. This is the reference where the tests have to pass. “Works for me” is no longer an excuse than.
2.) Use the –repeat Option and run the test suite twice in the same context. This will help you to fix *a lot* of setup/teardown issues.
3.) Don’t use singletons, use a service locator and dependency injection.
4.) Mock and stub the pain away.
5.) Various (motivating) punishments come in my mind, although I never implemented one

By: Edward Z. Yang

Edward Z. Yang — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:28:12 +0000

Agreed with Lukas. Either that, or REFACTOR!

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:10:48 +0000

Don’t use Singletons, especially static Singletons … or static anything else … you always end up removing them anyway, so why start.