FRT · Find and Run Test

About

FRT automatically executes the associated PHPUnit test for a changed source code file.

It takes a different approach to spatie/phpunit-watcher, a mature und well-developed testing tool. Its goal is to automatically re-execute the entire PHPUnit test suite when source code files are changed. The phpunit-watcher watch command starts an own watch process which executes the full test suite once a file has changed. However, the executed tests can, however, be restricted to specific tests using the --filter option. This means that regardless of which file is changed or saved, only the specified unit tests are executed.

$ vendor/bin/phpunit-watcher watch
$ vendor/bin/phpunit-watcher watch --filter=certain_test

Compared to this package, tomkyle/find-run-test takes a different approach: After saving a file, only the PHPUnit test associated with the modified file is executed.

COMPARISON	tomkyle/frt	spatie/phpunit-watcher
Watch process	via chokidar in package.json	phpunit-watcher command
Configuration	CLI options	Config file and CLI options
Customization	basic	better
Chaining with phpstan, phpcs or rector	via built-in shell && operators	none
Open shells needed	One	Two
Tests run	Those associated with changed file	All or all specified tests

Installation

Install FRT with Composer:

$ composer require tomkyle/find-run-test

How it works

The vendor/bin/frt executable expects the PHP file of which the source code has changed as argument. It will then look for any PHPUnit test file which suits the class name of the changed file and run the associated test. For example:

1. You update file src/MyClass.php and pass that file as argument to FRT.

   $ vendor/bin/frt src/MyClass.php

2. FRT will look for any PHPUnit file inside the project’s tests directory.

3. If there is a test file MyClassTest.php, FRT will execute it using PHPUnit’s --filter option.

Usage

Our goal is to automate testing as much as possible, and so do we with running unit tests. In the Node-based app developing world, Chokidar is one of the go-to file watching libraries, most often used for frontend building with webpack, gulp, workbox, and such. We will utilize it for FRT.

Install Chokidar with NPM:

$ npm install --dev chokidar-cli

Create a watch task inside the project root’s package.json, for example:

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "devDependencies": {
    "chokidar-cli": "^3.0.0"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "watch": "chokidar \"src/**/*.php\" -c \"./vendor/bin/frt\"",
  }
}

Back to our project root: Start the watch process with npm run watch. Chokidar will now report any PHP source code change and hand over the changed file to FRT, which in turn will call PHPUnit:

$ npm run watch
# Output will be like ...

Watching "src/**/*.php" ..

Assuming we just edited src/SomeNamespace/MyClass.php, we get this:

change:src/SomeNamespace/MyClass.php
PHPUnit 11.3.0 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

Runtime:       PHP 8.3.10
Configuration: /Users/john_doe/vendor-project/phpunit.dist.xml

....  4 / 4 (100%)

Time: 00:00.016, Memory: 10.00 MB

My Class (tests\Unit\MyClassTest)
 ✔ Construct
 ✔ Get styles
 ✔ Get colors
 ✔ Get throws exception for invalid color

OK (4 tests, 5 assertions)

In case no associated PHPUnit test can be found, FRT will report this:

No test available: src/SomeInterface.php

Chain with other test tools

Install the PHP development tools using Composer:

$ composer require --dev phpstan/phpstan
$ composer require --dev rector/rector
$ compsoer require --dev friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer
# If not already
$ composer require --dev phpunit/phpunit

Add the PHP tools as NPM scripts to package.json – see the full example in examples/package.json

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "devDependencies": {
    "chokidar-cli": "^3.0.0",
    "npm-run-all": "^4.1.5"
  },
  "scripts": {

    "watch": "npm-run-all -p watch:*",
    "watch:src": "chokidar \"src/**/*.php\" -c \"./vendor/bin/frt {path} && npm run phpstan {path} && npm run rector {path}\"",
    "watch:tests": "chokidar \"tests/**/*.php\" -c \"npm run phpunit:short {path}\"",

    "phpstan": "./vendor/bin/phpstan --no-progress analyse",

    "phpcs"       : "./vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer fix --verbose --diff --dry-run",
    "phpcs:apply" : "./vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer fix --verbose --diff",

    "rector": "./vendor/bin/rector process --dry-run",
    "rector:apply": "./vendor/bin/rector process",

    "phpunit": "./vendor/bin/phpunit",
    "phpunit:short": "npm run phpunit -- --no-coverage",
  }
}

Start watching:

$ npm run watch
# Output will be like ...

Watching "src/**/*.php" ..

Development

Clone repo and install requirements

$ git clone git@github.com:tomkyle/frt.git
$ composer install
$ npm install

Watch source and run various tests

This will watch changes inside the src/ and tests/ directories and run a series of tests:

1. Find and run the according unit test with PHPUnit.
2. Find possible bugs and documentation isses using phpstan.
3. Analyse code style and give hints on newer syntax using Rector.

$ npm run watch

Run all tests

$ npm run phpunit