Unit Tests For WordPress Plugins - Setting Up Our Testing Suite - Pippins Plugins

02/07/2020 Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins - Setting Up Our Testing Suite - Pippins Plugins
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Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – Setting

Up Our Testing Suite
POSTED ON
September 1, 2014
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This entry is part 2 of 4 in the Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins Series
Show All
← Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – An Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – Writing
Introduction Tests →
In part one of this tutorial series we brie ly looked at what unit tests are and we
walked through a couple of simple examples to illustrate how we can use them to
help ensure our code is working properly. Now it is time to actually setup our
testing suite and run our irst unit test.
There are quite a few different ways to setup unit tests in your WordPress plugins,
but by far the easiest is through WP-CLI, a command line interface for WordPress.
Due to its simplicity, we will use WP-CLI to setup our unit tests in this tutorial.
If you are not familiar with or comfortable with the command line, you might be
tempted to walk away from unit tests now and maybe come back another day. I am
going to try and keep this as simple as possible, so I’d encourage you to stick with
me as you will quickly ind that the command line is not nearly as scary or di icult
as some make it out to be.
Note: WP-CLI requires a unix-based operating system like Mac OS X or Linux. Once

our testing suite is setup, everything will be almost identical for all users, but only
Linux and Mac OS X users can utilize the WP-CLI tool.
What is a testing suite?
The phrase “testing suite” simply refers to our collection of unit tests and our
con iguration for those unit tests. When we say that we are going to setup the
testing suite, we mean that we are going to install PHPUnit (or similar), we are going
to create our con iguration ile, and we are going to write our initial unit tests.
Watch the video below for a quick example of what running our unit tests looks like:
Demonstration of unit tests in PHPUnit
Once we are done with the steps below, we should be able to run
the phpunit command from our plugin’s directory and have our unit tests run.
For this tutorial series, we are going to write unit tests for my Restrict Content Pro
plugin.
1. Install PHPUnit
The irst thing we need to do is install PHPUnit. The readme ile in the Github
repository for PHPUnit has the instructions on how to do this.
Simply follow the installation instructions on the Github page and then proceed to
the next step below.
If you run into any issues installing PHPUnit, leave a comment below and I will do
my best to help you.
2. Install WP-CLI
WP-CLI is also exceptionally simple to install, and you can ind the install
instructions here.
If you run into any issues installing WP-CLI, leave a comment below and I will do my
best to help you.
3. Use WP-CLI to setup our plugin’s unit tests
Now we are almost ready to really get into the fun part of unit tests: actually seeing
our unit tests run. Before we do that, however, we need to utilize WP-CLI to create
our initial unit tests con iguration.
Since I’m doing this along with you for my Restrict Content Pro plugin, I will
continually refer to Restrict Content Pro (or RCP). Anytime I do, just substitute in
your own plugin’s name.
WP-CLI includes a step-by-step guide of how to setup unit tests in your plugin, but
I’ i t lk th h it h ll
I’m going to walk through it here as well.
First, we need to open the command line and navigate to our WordPress

install’s main directory. Your exact ile path will be different than mine, so be sure to
adjust for where you have WordPress installed.
cd sites/wordpress/
Second, we need to instruct WP-CLI to create the initial unit test iles for us:
wp scaffold plugin-tests restrict-content-pro
This will generate all of the iles needed for our unit tests. If you now navigate to
your plugin’s folder and type ls -l, you will see several new iles and folders added.
cd wp-content/plugins/restrict-content-pro
ls -l
Before:
After:
The new folders / iles created:
bin/
install-wp-tests.sh
tests/
bootstrap.php
test-sample.php
phpunit.xml
.travis.yml
These iles are the foundation of our plugin’s test suite.
Now, run this command:
bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root '' localhost la
Replace “root” with the username of your database and replace ” with the database
password. Also replace “localhost” with the hostname of your database. You can
ind all three of these values in your wp-con ig.php ile.
You can now type phpunit into the command line and the unit tests will run:
phpunit
The testing suite that WP-CLI sets up for us includes one sample unit test, which
you can see was run successfully. Let’s take a look at the sample test. It is located
in tests/test-sample.php:
class SampleTest extends WP_UnitTestCase {

function testSample() {
// replace this with some actual testing code
$this->assertTrue( true );
}
}
If you look at what this test does, you will probably notice that it isn’t really testing
anything useful. It simple checks if true is equal to true, which we know it is, but it
provides a nice example that is easy to follow.
Now our testing suite is setup and we are ready to begin writing our own tests.
4. Writing your irst test
Before we jump into writing an actual unit test, let’s irst look how PHPUnit knows
what to execute as unit tests. The phpunit.xml ile is the main con iguration ile that
instructs PHPUnit on what to do. By default, it looks like this:
<phpunit
bootstrap="tests/bootstrap.php"
backupGlobals="false"
colors="true"
convertErrorsToExceptions="true"
convertNoticesToExceptions="true"
convertWarningsToExceptions="true"
>
<testsuites>
<testsuite>
<directory prefix="test-" suffix=".php"d
</testsuite>
</testsuites>
</phpunitd>
This tells PHPUnit where to look for the PHP ile that gets everything running
(tests/bootstrap php) de ines a few options and then also tells PHPUnit where the
(tests/bootstrap.php), de ines a few options, and then also tells PHPUnit where the
actual unit tests live. In this case, the unit tests live in the tests directory and are all
of the .php iles pre ixed with test-. This means that any ile we place in
the tests directory and name test-something.php will be considered unit tests.
This allows us to easily organize our unit tests into groups, which we will discuss
more later.
Note: only methods pre ixed with “test” will be considered a unit test. All other
methods will be skipped.
Let’s write a quick sample test now to help get a better grasp of what we’re doing.
This test won’t do much meaningful, beyond providing a nice example.
To write a new test, all we need to do is create a new method inside the SampleTest
class, like this:
function test_sample_string() {

$string = 'Unit tests are sweet';

$this->assertEquals( 'Unit tests are sweet', $string );
}
This does nothing more than setup a variable called $string, set its value to “Unit
tests are sweet”, and then checks that “Unit tests are sweet” is indeed equal to the
$string variable. If we now run PHPUnit, we will see that we have two tests and both
are passing successfully:
Awesome! We have now written a successful unit test. That’s awesome and you are
now a heck of a lot further along on your journey to understanding and utilizing unit
tests than a huge number of developers.
Let’s now do another quick demonstration. Change our test_sample_string() test to

this:
function test_sample_string() {

$string = 'Unit tests are sweet';

$this->assertEquals( 'Failing Unit tests are sad', $string );
}
And now run phpunit again:
Our simple unit test now fails because we are trying to assert that two very-non-
equal strings are equal to each other. Since the two strings are not the same, our
test fails, and PHPUnit tells us that, including why it failed and the exact line number
that failed.
When writing unit tests, there are two main terms we often use to describe what we
are doing: “tests” and “assertions”. A “test” is a collection of assertions and an
assertion is one check within a test. Each test must contain at least one assertion
but a test may also contain many assertions. The sample test we wrote above
contains one assertion.
We will learn more about writing tests and assertions in the next part of this series.
93 thoughts so far
Have your say
← Older Comments
prajakta
March 17, 2017
Thanks for the nice tutorial !

When I type “wp scaffold plugin-tests my-plugin” I get following error and no iles
are generated:
Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required
by WordPress
How to ix this ? Please help
Reply
Pippin Williamson
March 23, 2017
Take a look at this forum post: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/your-php-

installation-appears-to-be-missing-the-mysql-extension-which-is-require-33/ – It
has several solutions in it.
eyeoncomputers
May 2, 2017
Really useful. Bugs can pop up over time and having such a tool can be really useful
to ind out where the issues are. Nice work!
Reply
truckeesolutions
June 7, 2017
bin/install-wp-tests.sh: line 82: svn: command not found
Any workaround for git only installations, or is svn an undeclared dependency?

I’m working on a Ubuntu 16 VM
Reply
truckeesolutions
June 7, 2017
This appears to be a workaround:
#svn co –quiet
https://develop.svn.wordpress.org/${WP_TESTS_TAG}/tests/phpunit/includes/
$WP_TESTS_DIR/includes
#svn co –quiet
https://develop.svn.wordpress.org/${WP_TESTS_TAG}/tests/phpunit/data/
$WP_TESTS_DIR/data
git clone
https://develop.svn.wordpress.org/${WP_TESTS_TAG}/tests/phpunit/includes/
$WP_TESTS_DIR/includes
git clone
https://develop.svn.wordpress.org/${WP_TESTS_TAG}/tests/phpunit/data/
$WP_TESTS_DIR/data
But I am largely bash illiterate so who knows? A database wordpress_test was

created though.
truckeesolutions
June 7, 2017
Even after installing svn I get:
require_once(/tmp/wordpress-tests-lib/includes/functions.php): failed to open

stream
Reply
Andrzej
June 13, 2017
You have to run again bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root ” localhost
/tmp/wordpress-tests-lib/ is temporary installation
Thanks for great tutorial Pippin
janro
July 3, 2017
For addition to Andrzej’s reply, I had to remove wordpress-tests-lib directory

before rerun bash command.
The command would be then:

rm -rf /tmp/wordpress-tests-lib; bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root ”
localhost latest
The command is from danielbachhuber’s reply at: https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-

cli/issues/1938#issuecomment-124237542
Kyle Tozer
October 6, 2017
Thanks for the fantastic guide! I initially had no problem setting this up, however,
now when I try to run phpunit I receive an error on line 14 of the bootstrap.php ile. I
did not receive this before and I am not sure how to resolve this.
Reply
Jaume
March 5, 2018
minor ix: before wp scaffold you to mkdir plugin directory irst

02/07/2020 g Up Our Testing Suite - Pippins Plugins
Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins - Setting
Reply
Christian Saborío
April 11, 2018
This was so easy to follow, thank you for taking the time to write this with such
detail.
One minor change that needs to be corrected as it can throw someone off:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=19rFzWL7_9eEzZpO8pMydHvupKUtSogZ7
Reply
Alex Haines
May 8, 2018
Just for your information if you get an issue that no test ran it may be because it is
excluded in the phpunit.xml.dist ile which is installed in the plugin folder.
Reply
Charan sai karthick
May 28, 2018
Then how to include that ile?
Charan sai karthick

May 28, 2018
When I type phpunit, it shows the following
Reply
Reply
Charan sai karthick
May 28, 2018
PHPUnit 3.7.28 by Sebastian Bergmann.
Usage: phpunit [switches] UnitTest [UnitTest.php]

phpunit [switches]
–log-junit Log test execution in JUnit XML format to ile.

–log-tap Log test execution in TAP format to ile.
–log-json Log test execution in JSON format.
–coverage-clover Generate code coverage report in Clover XML format.

–coverage-html Generate code coverage report in HTML format.
–coverage-php Serialize PHP_CodeCoverage object to ile.
–coverage-text= Generate code coverage report in text format.
Default to writing to the standard output.
–testdox-html Write agile documentation in HTML format to ile.

–testdox-text Write agile documentation in Text format to ile.
– ilter Filter which tests to run.

–testsuite Filter which testsuite to run.
–group … Only runs tests from the speci ied group(s).
–exclude-group … Exclude tests from the speci ied group(s).
–list-groups List available test groups.
–test-su ix … Only search for test in iles with speci ied
su ix(es). Default: Test.php,.phpt
–loader TestSuiteLoader implementation to use.

–printer TestSuiteListener implementation to use.
–repeat Runs the test(s) repeatedly.
–tap Report test execution progress in TAP format.

–testdox Report test execution progress in TestDox format.
–colors Use colors in output.

–stderr Write to STDERR instead of STDOUT.
–stop-on-error Stop execution upon irst error.
p p p
–stop-on-failure Stop execution upon irst error or failure.
–stop-on-skipped Stop execution upon irst skipped test.
–stop-on-incomplete Stop execution upon irst incomplete test.
–strict Run tests in strict mode.
-v|–verbose Output more verbose information.
–debug Display debugging information during test execution.
–process-isolation Run each test in a separate PHP process.

–no-globals-backup Do not backup and restore $GLOBALS for each test.
–static-backup Backup and restore static attributes for each test.
–bootstrap A “bootstrap” PHP ile that is run before the tests.

-c|–con iguration Read con iguration from XML ile.
–no-con iguration Ignore default con iguration ile (phpunit.xml).
–include-path Prepend PHP’s include_path with given path(s).
-d key[=value] Sets a php.ini value.
-h|–help Prints this usage information.

–version Prints the version and exits.
← Older Comments
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02/07/2020 Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins - Setting Up Our Testing Suite - Pippins Plugins

Products Learn About Blog Reviews Contact

Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – Setting

Note: WP-CLI requires a unix-based operating system like Mac OS X or Linux. Once

What is a testing suite?

Demonstration of unit tests in PHPUnit

3. Use WP-CLI to setup our plugin’s unit tests

First, we need to open the command line and navigate to our WordPress

The new folders / iles created:

These iles are the foundation of our plugin’s test suite.

Now, run this command:

bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root '' localhost la

class SampleTest extends WP_UnitTestCase {

4. Writing your irst test

Let’s now do another quick demonstration. Change our test_sample_string() test to

And now run phpunit again:

Thanks for the nice tutorial !

How to ix this ? Please help

March 23, 2017

Take a look at this forum post: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/your-php-

bin/install-wp-tests.sh: line 82: svn: command not found

Any workaround for git only installations, or is svn an undeclared dependency?

I’m working on a Ubuntu 16 VM

This appears to be a workaround:

But I am largely bash illiterate so who knows? A database wordpress_test was

Even after installing svn I get:

require_once(/tmp/wordpress-tests-lib/includes/functions.php): failed to open

June 13, 2017

You have to run again bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root ” localhost

/tmp/wordpress-tests-lib/ is temporary installation

Thanks for great tutorial Pippin

For addition to Andrzej’s reply, I had to remove wordpress-tests-lib directory

The command would be then:

The command is from danielbachhuber’s reply at: https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-

minor ix: before wp scaﬀold you to mkdir plugin directory irst

Charan sai karthick

May 28, 2018

Then how to include that ile?

Charan sai karthick

When I type phpunit, it shows the following

Charan sai karthick

May 28, 2018

PHPUnit 3.7.28 by Sebastian Bergmann.

Usage: phpunit [switches] UnitTest [UnitTest.php]

–log-junit Log test execution in JUnit XML format to ile.

–coverage-clover Generate code coverage report in Clover XML format.

–testdox-html Write agile documentation in HTML format to ile.

– ilter Filter which tests to run.

–loader TestSuiteLoader implementation to use.

–tap Report test execution progress in TAP format.

–colors Use colors in output.

–process-isolation Run each test in a separate PHP process.

–bootstrap A “bootstrap” PHP ile that is run before the tests.

-h|–help Prints this usage information.

Lost your password?

Search + press enter

Apply Filters Development Podcast

Latest Premium Content

Help Scout documentation search with Gravity Forms

Extending the WordPress metadata API

Custom Database API – A Sample Orders Class

View all 41 tickets on Trac.

get post gallery images