PHP & Web Development Blogs

In case you are living under a rock, the latest version of PHP released last week. PHP developers around the world began rebuilding their development containers with it so they can run their tests. Now it’s your turn. If you haven’t already installed it, you can download it here http://php.net/downloads.php Grab it, get it running in your development environment, and run those unit tests. If all goes well, you can begin planning your staged deployment to production.

If you need a quick start guide to get you going, our good friend Mr Colin O’Dell has just the thing for you “Installing PHP 7.1”. It’ll get you up and going quickly on PHP 7.1.

What’s the big deal about PHP 7.1? I am so glad you asked. Here are the major new features released in PHP 7.1.

* Nullable types
* Void return type
* Iterable pseudo-type
* Class constant visiblity modifiers
* Square bracket syntax for list() and the ability to specify keys in list()
* Catching multiple exceptions types

Now if you want a quick intro to several of these new features, check out our “RFCs of the Future” playlist on YouTube. In it, I talk about 4 of the new features.

Oh and while you are watching things download & compile, why not take the time to give a shoutout to all the core contributors, and a special thank you to Davey Shafik and Joe Watkins, the PHP 7.1 release managers.

Cheers!
=C=

PHPUnit is an essential tool for every PHP developers. It is one of those tools that every PHP developer should have installed in their development environment. The problems most first time PHPUnit developers run into are where to install it and how to install it. This quick guide will walk you through the process and answer both questions.

How do I install PHPUnit

The Easy Way

In your project’s root directory use this command.

composer require --dev phpunit/phpunit ^6.0

This command adds PHPUnit to your project as a development dependency. This is the absolute best way to install PHPUnit. It is the best way because this way the version of PHPUnit does not change unless you change it. We specified ^6.0 as the version which means we’ll get all the updates to the 6.0 branch but not 6.1. While BC breaks don’t happen often in PHPUnit, they have happened. If you have a globally installed version of PHPUnit and you upgrade it to a version that breaks BC, you have to go update all of your tests immediately. This is a lot of hassle if you have a lot of projects with a lot of tests. Keeping a copy of PHPUnit installed as a dev requirement in each project means that each project has its own copy that can be upgraded as necessary.

The Hard Way

In a command prompt regardless of where you are in your file system, use this command.

composer global require phpunit/phpunit ^6.0

On MacOS and Linux machines, this will install PHPUnit in ~/.composer/vendor/bin. If you add this directory to your path, then from any project, you can execute PHPUnit. However, as noted above, if you ever upgrade your globally installed packages then you will have problems.

composer global update

Run that when there is a new version of PHPUnit, it will be installed, regardless of whether this will break your existing unit tests on one or more of your projects. Windows users will need to locate the .composer/vendor/bin directory in your user’s home directory.

The “ZOMG why would you do it this way” Way

Here is the old-school use wget and move it into the correct position manually. You can do it this way, but you will have to take care of all upgrades manually as well. If you only have a single project on the computer and you never ever plan on changing the version of PHPUnit….nope, still better to usecomposer require --dev.

wget https://phar.phpunit.de/phpunit-6.0.phar

chmod +x phpunit-6.0.phar

sudo mv phpunit-6.0.phar /usr/local/bin/phpunit

phpunit --version

These instructions are of course for MacOS or Linux. Windows user won’t need to do chmod or sudo but will need a BAT file.

That’s it. One of those commands should get you a working copy of PHPUnit on your computer.

Resources:

* Installing PHPUnit
* Composer Introduction (For the Global option)