How to Determine if PHPUnit Tests are Running?

Question

I currently have a problem that I have to work around in legacy code to get our interaction with a PHP Extension to work properly (Singleton Testing Question).

As such, I do not want to execute this code when running our normal production code with the application. Therefore, I need to check in regular PHP code if the code being executed is being executed as part of a test or not.

Any suggestions on how to determine this? I thought about a defined variable tied to the presence of the test files themselves (we do not ship the tests to customers) but our developers need the Extension to work normally, while the CI server needs to run the tests.

Would a Global set in the PHPUnit.xml file be recommended? Other thoughts?

Jens A. Koch · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-05 15:09:34Z

49

An alternative approach is to set a constant in the PHP section of your phpunit.xml.*:

<php>
   <const name="PHPUNIT_YOURAPPLICATION_TESTSUITE" value="true"/>
</php>

In your PHP application, you might then use the following check:

if (defined('PHPUNIT_YOURAPPLICATION_TESTSUITE') && PHPUNIT_YOURAPPLICATION_TESTSUITE)
{ 
    echo 'TestSuite running!';
}

First, we check that the constant is defined, secondly, we check the value of the constant.

edited Jul 5, 2023 at 15:09

answered Aug 1, 2013 at 11:03

Jens A. Koch

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5 Comments

Martti Laine Over a year ago

Keep in mind that PHP strangely evaluates an undefined constant as a string (if EXAMPLE isn't defined, it is evaluated as 'EXAMPLE'. Meaning, you should evaluate it properly using ===. It will still throw a notification about an undefined constant.

Mathias Lykkegaard Lorenzen Over a year ago

Won't === also match the type up, and since it's defined as true (a boolean) but he is checking if it is 1 (an integer), it will fail? I understand your comment, but in this example, == is better.

Carsten Over a year ago

Thanks to your answer I found that (in Laravel 5) the APP_ENV is set to testing. This made it way really easy to implement your answer. I'd really recommend this solution for Laravel.

DimeCadmium Over a year ago

There is no version of PHP in which the string "PHPUNIT_YOURAPPLICATION_TESTSUITE" would be considered equal to 1. The only way a string would ever be considered equal to 1 is if it begins with a 1. Otherwise, it would be considered equal to 0 (or some other number), but not 1. There is no reason to use === here. Using == is perfectly "proper". (And as mentioned, === would not in fact work here)

Jens A. Koch Over a year ago

Hm? PHPUNIT_YOURAPPLICATION_TESTSUITE is not a string, but a constant identifier. The second part of the comparision is the check of the value of the constant.

David Harkness · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-20 21:27:09Z

30

Define a constant in your PHPUnit bootstrap.php file. This is executed before loading or running any tests. This shouldn't impact developers running the application normally--just the unit tests.

answered Apr 20, 2012 at 21:27

David Harkness

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Comments

brenjt · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-17 17:44:45Z

14

If you're using Laravel than use App::runningUnitTests()

edited Oct 17, 2018 at 17:44

brenjt

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answered Sep 29, 2018 at 2:49

pablorsk

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Comments

Marcos · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19 16:21:09Z

13

You could check the $argv different ways.

if(PHP_SAPI == 'cli') {

    if(strpos($_SERVER['argv'][0], 'phpunit') !== FALSE) { ... }
    // or
    if($_SERVER['argv'][0] == '/usr/bin/phpunit') { ... }

}

edited Aug 19, 2015 at 16:21

Marcos

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answered Dec 20, 2013 at 22:48

Xeoncross

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1 Comment

Steve Moretz Over a year ago

I used this in the autoloader option of phpunit, there you have no access to phpunit.xml or anything yet, so this works just great!

Tomas Votruba · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-16 08:53:32Z

11

Use PHPUnit Constants

You can either define constant, but that requires your work, no typos and it's not generic. How to do it better?

PHPUnit defines 2 constants by itself:

if (! defined('PHPUNIT_COMPOSER_INSTALL') && ! defined('__PHPUNIT_PHAR__')) {
    // is not PHPUnit run
    return;
}

// is PHPUnit

edited Jul 16, 2020 at 8:53

answered Mar 15, 2018 at 12:03

Tomas Votruba

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3 Comments

Steven Scott Over a year ago

Now that there are some PHPUnit values, this is a good solution as well. My answer is older before these were fully available. Using your own also allows you to know what test suite (if you have multiple) is running as an extra bonus.

Tim Rogers Over a year ago

In PHPUnit v3.7.28 the constant to check is 'PHPUnit_MAIN_METHOD'.

Tomas Votruba Over a year ago

You should not use unsupported versions of PHPUnit nor PHP. It's dangerous - php.net/supported-versions.php

Loenix · Accepted Answer · 2023-08-05 08:41:52Z

1

You could look for the constant PHPUNIT_COMPOSER_INSTALL defined by the official phpunit runner by using defined('PHPUNIT_COMPOSER_INSTALL'). There are also some global variables defined by phpunit.

But they could be undefined while using alternative runner (like IDE)

answered Aug 5, 2023 at 8:41

Loenix

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