Operating on all files/classes in a directory - php

Question

I am just starting with PHPunit so not sure if I'm missing something basic but I'd like to have a test case:
scan a particular source directory,
find all files with .PHP extension,
then attempt to instantiate each of the classes represented by these files
test that each class returns the right properties from particular call (all classes in this directory are subtypes of a common base class)
Make sense? The setup code would look like this:
protected function setUp() {
$this->documentFiles = glob('*.php');
$this->documentClasses = array_map(function($file) {
return substr($file,0,count($file)-5); // strip off ".php"
}, $this->documentFiles);
}
And then the instantiation test would be:
public function testInstantiation() {
foreach($this->documentClasses as $class) {
try {
$object = new $class;
} catch (Exception $e) {
fail("Failure to instantiate '{$class}': " + $e.getMessage());
}
}
}
right now the test is passing because the $CWD is not the right directory and consequently it isn't picking up any PHP files.
Is there a way to specify what the working directory should be? Ideally a way which is relative to the root of the project (and therefore abstracts the physical file system).
p.s. my project is PSR-0 compliant for what that is worth

Answer 1

I see at least 2 Unittests:
Testing that all php files with their classes are found
Testing that those classes are called as expected.
Usually you are also testing the filesystem with your tests which is a bad practice. Of course, your called classes need to be tested in separeted tests too in case you haven't done that.
I don't know your class structure so I can only guess you have at least created a class for reading the files fron the given directory, a class that gets the class names (which should be a piece of psr-0 cake) and a class creating the objects from that list. That way you can mock dependencies and the access to the filesystem is reduced to a simple class that can not influence other tests when its mocked.
I suggest using the DirectoryIterator or FilesystemIterator depending on which php version you are using.

Answer 2

Is there a way to specify what the working directory should be?
You can use chdir. You can also just pass a fully qualified path to glob:
glob(__DIR__ . '/*.php');
I don't think your solution is a good one, however. Use a data provider and return an array of instances (or class names as strings). You'll get much better error messages when you test and it won't break when/if you change directory structure.
<?php
class SomeExampleTest extends \PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
public function nameProvider()
{
return array(
array(new Vendor\Package\ClassName()),
array(new Vendor\Package\ClassNameAgain()),
);
}
/**
* #dataProvider nameProvider
*/
public function testSomeMethod($obj)
{
// do some assertions
$this->assertEquals('something', $obj->theMethodYouWantToTest());
}
}

Answer 3

Ok, i've been able to achieve the result I was looking for but I'm wondering if there might be a more savvy "PHPunit" way of doing. Please let me know if you'd do this differently.
I identified that the CWD was the /tests/ directory. This is probably a little fragile as it could easily be run from somewhere further into the test chain but in most cases these days it's fine for me. I can then change my setUp() method to this:
protected function setUp() {
$namespace = "\\path\\to\\classes\\";
$this->documentFiles = glob('../src/path/to/classes/*.php');
$this->documentClasses = array_map(function($file) use ($namespace) {
if (preg_match('/.*\/(.*)\.php/',$file,$matches) === 1)
return $namespace . $matches[1];
else
return null;
}, $this->documentFiles);
}
As I said, it works. I'd love to think there is some more "built-in" way of doing something like this but I'm brand new to PHPunit.