PHPUnit Pocket Guide

Chapter 1. Introduction

For a very long time, my answer to the question, "When will you write documentation for PHPUnit?" has been, "You do not need documentation for PHPUnit. Just read the documentation for JUnit or buy a book on JUnit and adapt the code examples from Java™ and JUnit to PHP and PHPUnit." When I mentioned this to Barbara Weiss and Alexandra Follenius from the O'Reilly Germany office, they encouraged me to think it over and write a book that would serve as the documentation for PHPUnit.

Requirements

The topic of this book is PHPUnit, an open source framework for test-driven development with the PHP programming language. This book covers Version 2.3 of PHPUnit, which requires PHP 5.1. However, most of the examples should work with PHPUnit Versions 2.0–2.2, as well as PHP 5.0. The "PHPUnit for PHP 4" section, later in this book, covers the older, no longer actively developed version of PHPUnit for PHP 4.

The reader should have a good understanding of object-oriented programming with PHP 5. To German readers, I recommend my book Professionelle Softwareentwicklung mit PHP 5 as an introduction to object-oriented programming with PHP 5. A good English book on the subject is PHP 5 Power Programming by Andi Gutmans, Stig Bakken, and Derick Rethans (Prentice Hall PTR).