Planet PHP

Phix 0.16.0 Released

2013-05-23T20:10:00Z

Phix is a tool for creating and managing PHP components and tools and releasing them as PEAR packages.

I’ve pushed out Phix 0.16.0 this evening, with the following changes:

phing build-vendor now removes the component’s own code from the vendor/ folder. (We build the vendor/ folder using PEAR, which installs the component into the vendor/ folder … sigh)
An update to Phing changed the default behaviour of the tag, breaking backwards-compatibility. I’ve updated our build.xml file to make the tag revert back to its original behaviour.

To update your copy of Phix, please run:
pear upgrade phix/phix4componentdev

Any problems, please let me know.

UA Testing with Selenium and PHPUnit

2013-05-23T18:00:00Z

Last week I spoke at php[tek] 2013 where I explained to people how to get started with Selenium IDE to record user interaction with the web interface, convert them to PHPUnit testcases and automatically execute them on multiple browsers on multiple platforms.

The feedback I got was awesome, you're all a great crowd! But on twitter I also received a bunch of questions regarding how to set up multiple platforms and why I used Windows in my presentation to deploy to.

So today I deceided it was time to write a full article on this subject.

What is Selenium?

Selenium is a tool that allows you to continuously test user interfaces of web applications. The most common usages for Selenium testing are the following:

testing elements are (not) on the web interface
users can't break out a certain flow on the web interface
calculated values are correct after modification
errors appear on screen when mistakes are made by users
reported issues are valid

In general we call these type of tests User Acceptance Tests or UAT and are all focused from the point of the end-user, the person using the web interface to accomplish a certain goal.

Why are they important?

UAT have their own right to exist. Just like regular unit, performance and stress tests they have their own agenda and are adressing a particular part of your application that needs testing. All to prevent your customers/visitors from finding issues, bugs or just unfunctional pieces on your web application and loose their trust in your products or services.

Therefor it's always good to invest in the "visibile" part of your web application. Especially when using javascript, you want to ensure it always works as intended.

Disclaimer

Selenium tests are in no way a replacement for regular unit tests. Their focus is on generated output of your web application within a browser. Unit tests are still necessary to ensure the logic of your application is not broken when making modifications or adding new functionality!

Setting things up

You can write your own Selenium tests by hand, but the easiest way is to use the

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Swede From Future Says He Can Code

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

A revaluation today as a Swedish national, who has traveled back in time, says he can code!

PGSQL Cheat Sheet

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

This table provides a simple ready reference to some common commands used in PostgreSQL. Ideal for those more accustomed to MySQL or other databases.

Simple Mysql PHP Menu

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

There are possibly as many menu systems available for PHP and MySQL as there are PHP programmers. Here is yet another way of generating menus from a database.

Simple Mysql PHP Menu

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

There are possibly as many menu systems available for PHP and MySQL as there are PHP programmers. Here is yet another way of generating menus from a database.

Test For Prime Numbers With PHP Regular Expression

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

This function provides a novel method of testing if a number is prime, by using a PHP regular expression.

Web2bb 0.0.9 Released

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

This is the latest update to the WEB2BB Framework and includes a simple fix for an error that failed to catch an exception. The WEB2BB framework is a fully functioning MVC style framework that utilizes the best features of PHP 5.3 and above. By making use of the latest additions to PHP, the WEB2BB framework is able to provide sleek code and optimal performance. It does not try to be all things to all people and so the codebase is kept to a minimum.

nWire Eclipse Zend Plugin Review

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

PHPRO.ORG receives many emails requesting reviews for magazines, web sites, application development tools, applications, books etc. Now and again, one of these catches the eye and deserves further inspection. Recently, a request for a product called nWire arrived which allegedly "accelerates PHP development by helping developers navigate through their code and better understand the architecture of their application". Here is a closer look at nWire.

Trim All Members Of An Array With PHP

2013-05-23T09:22:00Z

This little helper function provides a simple method to trim the white space from the beginning and end of all the elements in an array. It uses the call to array trim, which, in turn, calls the trim() function. The iteration is handled internally and so provides maximum performance then dealing with the the problem in user code.