Continuous Testing using Sismo

Sismo is free and open source, and can be downloaded from the SensioLabs site.

"Learn how to easily test your PHP projects using SensioLabs’ excellent Sismo suite"

Testing code is something that every developer has to do to ensure a quality product on completion of a project. Most coders when they start testing just manually follow the procedure of the code and try to find where the issue is, possibly echoing out a few variables here and there. While this works fine sometimes, for larger projects or projects you have inherited from other developers it can be a time consuming and frustrating process. Thankfully there are lots of tools available to help simplify testing and to find bugs as soon as they are introduced. PHP is no different and has apps such as SimpleTest or PHPUnit. SensioLabs have been making waves with their modern Symfony2 framework and the associated modules, and recently released the Sismo testing suite. Sismo is a continuous testing server that is written in PHP but can integrate with any language. All you need to do is tell it what program you are using to test within the config file. This tutorial will show you how to test your PHP projects using Sismo, Git, and PHPUnit.

STEP 1: Download Sismo
To start off we need to download the Sismo software, which can be found at sismo.sensiolabs.org. Sismo is quite simply just one PHP file, but don’t be fooled, its a very powerful little tool. Place the file into the web directory of your project.

STEP 2: Install PEAR
You’ll also need to have the PEAR package manager installed if you don’t already. For Windows users, run the file shown from the search bar, for OS X and Linux users, you’ll need to run them from a terminal window. We need to do this, as this is how we will install PHPUnit, which is to be the testing software that we’ll use.

CODE:
Windows:
c:\php\go-pear.bat.

Linux:
$ wget http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar
$ php go-pear.phar

OS X:
$ wget http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar
$ php -d detect_unicode=0 go-pear.phar

Installation is done using the PEAR package manager, which is used for many other PHP libraries.

STEP 3: Install PHPUnit
Once you have PEAR set up its time to install PHPUnit. PHPUnit is one of the most popular unit testers for PHP and is a valuable tool to have. Back in the terminal, enter the commands below to start the installation.

CODE:
pear config-set auto_discover 1
pear install pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit

STEP 4: Example Test For PHPUnit
When you write your tests for PHPUnit, you extend the main PHPUnit class and then place your test methods inside that. It’s normal to keep your tests in a separate folder for the rest of your app.

CODE:
require_once 'PHPUnit/Framework.php';
class ArrayTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
}

STEP 5: Main Test Methods
If you are not used to unit testing, then now is a good time to take a look at how it works and why you really should do it. Unit testing means writing code that verifies the output of your main app code. You write tests for each section of your code until your entire project is covered. You can then run all the tests as one when implementing new features to quickly find bugs across the entire project.

CODE:
functiontestToString(){
{

STEP 6: Testing of Main Test Methods
When writing unit tests, you need to break each method down into goals. Here we simply confirm that the variable we are testing contains the string ‘This is my var’. If it does not, then the test fails.

CODE:
functiontestToString(){
$result=$this->myVar->toString('contains%s');
$expected='containsThis is my var';
$this->assertTrue($result==$expected);

STEP 7: Second Method
As another example of a unit test method, we can test that we have the correct amount of elements within an array by calling the assertCount method. This test would clearly fail, as we are asserting that we have 12 elements when we only have three within our array.

CODE:
public function testAmount()
{
$this->assertCount(12, array('myString' , 'anotherString' , 'etc'));
}

STEP 8: Test Out Sismo
We need to create a config file for Sismo to read from. As Sismo is one file, we have to make the directory and file contents ourselves. It’s easiest with Terminal. Navigate on the command line to the folder you placed Sismo in.

STEP 9: Create Config Directory
In Terminal enter the commands below. This creates our config directory and then a PHP config file that we will populate with our settings. Sismo is straightforward, but there are a few handy settings you can tweak.

CODE:
mkdir ~/.sismo
cd ~/.sismo
touch config.php

The main web interface is attractive, but most of the work can be done using just the console.

STEP 10: Start config.php
Now edit the config.php file to contain the settings with which we need to work. Start off by creating a new array called $projects, then we can add a notification system. Uncomment the notifier variable relevant to your OS.

CODE:
<?php
$projects = array();
For OS X use the Growl notification system on test end
$notifier = $notifier = new Sismo\Notifier\
GrowlNotifier('pa$$word');
For Linux, use Dbus notifications
$notifier = new Sismo\Notifier\DBusNotifier();

STEP 11: Add Your Git Repos
Sismo works with Git repositories, so you will need to have a local and GitHub hosted repo to get the most out of the testing suite. Replace the relevant values in the code below with your own repos.

CODE:
$projects[] = new Sismo\GithubProject

('myLocalProject', '/Users/kiksy/myProj', $notifier);
$projects[] = new Sismo\GithubProject

('myProj', 'kiksy/myProj', $notifier);

STEP 12: Project Settings
Then we need to add a new project to our Sismo object. Once we have done that we can set our remote repository location, this will be somewhere on github.com. The branch that you will need is the most likely master, but you can obviously get this to your own branch you’re working on.

CODE:
$myProj = new Sismo\Project('myProj');
$myProj->setRepository('https://github.com/kiksy/myProj.git');
$myProj->setBranch('master');

STEP 13: Remaining Project Settings
The last settings we need to add make up the command that will run to start your tests. As we are using PHPUnit, it links to the script to run that. You can switch this out though and change it for any testing software that you want to use for your specific language. Finally, we add the commit route and return our $project variable.

CODE:
$myProj->setCommand('./vendors.sh; phpunit');
$myProj->setSlug('symfony-local');
$myProj->setUrlPattern('https://github.com/kiksy/myProj/commit/%commit%');
$myProj->addNotifier($notifier);
$projects[] = $myProj;
return $projects;

STEP 14: Changing The Config File Location
As the config file is very specific for one project, and the default location is set to be within the root of the user directory, you may want to move it – perhaps to the bottom of the project directory. That way you can run multiple Sismo tests on the same machine for different projects. Simply run this command to do so:

CODE:
php sismo.php --config-file=.sismo/config.php

STEP 15: Run Sismo Test
Open the browser and go to localhost/myProj/sismo.php – you should then see the main Sismo report page. This is where the updates will come on the status of each test and whether or not they have passed. The actual running of the tests is done from the command line.

STEP 16: Run Your Unit Test
The next thing we need to do is run our unit test and see the end result. Make sure you are in the correct directory within your project and then run the command below. In your browser you should then see the results of the test.

CODE:
php sismo.php build

STEP 17: Possible Issues
While Sismo is fairly easy to set up, it is possible to come into some problems. Even if you don’t use it, Sismo is dependent on SQLite3, and so this needs to be installed before Sismo will successfully run. While OS X mostly comes installed with SQLite, some of the Linux flavors don’t. Run the below to start the installation.

CODE:
sudo apt-get install php5-cli php5-dev make
sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev
sudo apt-get install php5-sqlite3
sudo apt-get remove php5-sqlite3
cd ~
wget http://pecl.php.net/get/sqlite3-0.6.tgz

STEP 18: Make SQLite3
After we get command has finished downloading the tarball, you need to unzip it and then build the extension from the source. After that the final command will restart Apache. If this doesn’t work for you, you can also try ‘apt-get install php5-SQLite’.

CODE:
$ tar -zxf sqlite3-0.6.tgz
$ cd sqlite3-0.6/
$ sudo phpize
$ sudo ./configure
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo apache2ctl restart

STEP 19: More Descriptive Output
To make Sismo output more information from the command line, either to debug the installation or to find out more on the state of your builds, you can use the --verbose switch when running Sismo. Just enter the command below.

CODE:
php sismo.php build --verbose

STEP 20: Silence Sismo
Alternatively, if you are logging the results of the tests, you might not want Sismo to output so much information. In this case you can tell Sismo to be quiet, simply by using the --q or --quiet switch. If at any time you get stuck, you can also use -h to get help on a topic.

CODE:
php sismo.php build --quiet

STEP 21: Extending Sismo
As mentioned earlier, the default location for the config file is in the root of your own personal user directory. This isn’t great if you have lots and lots and lots of projects on the go at one time, or if you are working remotely on a project, perhaps one with multiple branches. SismoFinder is a simple wrapper to solve that problem for you.

CODE:
git clone https://github.com/havvg/SismoFinder.git

STEP 22: SismoFinder Config
You then just need to replace the Sismo config file with the following code. This autoloads the project into the correct directory and saves time. You can also continue to use the other settings such as the choice of notifications.

CODE:
$loader = new Symfony\Component\ClassLoader\UniversalClassLoader();
$loader->registerNamespaces(array(
'SismoFinder' => '/Users/kiksy/myProjSismoFinder/src',
));
$loader->register();
$finder = new SismoFinder\Finder();
$finder->addWorkspace('/Users/kiksy/myProj');
return $finder->getProjects();

Code Library: The Sismo PHP Config Code

The Sismo.php config file is the only thing you need to add to start using the continuous testing server.

CODE:

//$notifier = $notifier = new Sismo\Notifier\GrowlNotifier('pa$$word');

//$notifier = new Sismo\Notifier\DBusNotifier();

$projects[] = new Sismo\GithubProject('myLocalProject', '/Users/kiksy/myProj', $notifier);

$projects[] = new Sismo\GithubProject('myProj', 'kiksy/myProj',$notifier);

$myProj = new Sismo\Project('myProj');

The GitHub repository is set here. Make sure to add the .git at the end, in the same way, you would clone a repo.

CODE:

$myProj->setRepository('https://github.com/kiksy/myProj.git');

$myProj->setBranch('master');

$myProj->setCommand('./vendors.sh;phpunit');

$myProj->setSlug('symfony-local');

$myProj->setUrlPattern('https://github.com/kiksy/myProj/commit/%commit%');

$myProj->addNotifier($notifier);

$projects[] = $myProj;

Finally, we return an array of projects for Sismo to monitor. If the projects are not valid, then Sismo will let you know they have failed in the terminal window.

CODE:

return $projects;

Alternative to PHPUnit:
One of the other popular unit testing suites for PHP is SimpleTest. SimpleTest can be downloaded from www.simpletest.org, and can be used with Sismo simply by linking to the relevant directory.