I've hacked together a little CLI script that I think will be of use to many people who are trying to answer the question "just what should I do to test this thing anyway?" as they learn how to write PHPUnit tests to go along with their code.

While I as at php|tek 2012 I had a conversation with Michelangelo van Dam about an idea I had for a testing tool: something that could look at your code and give you suggestions on what you should be testing. In no time flat he hooked me up with one of the core guys on the phpDocumentor project, Mike van Riel and in the course of one short Skype chat I knew I had the right tools for the job.

I've created something that I am calling PHP-Tricorder, a CLI utility that can be used in conjunction with phpdoc structure.xml files to make suggestions on testing scenarios. It's at a 0.1 release right now, so I anticipate it will grow and add more features as time goes on. I'd like to think right now that it's pretty useful for people who are just beginning down the road of writing tests for their code.

Here's some sample output from a run of PHP-Tricorder:

chartjes@php-vm:~/php-tricorder$ php tricorder.php ../building-testable-applications/lib/IBL/structure.xml 
Reading in phpDocumentor structure file...

FranchiseMapper.php

Scanning FranchiseMapper

__construct -- make sure to mock $conn as \PDO

createFranchiseFromRow -- make sure to test $row using an empty array()

delete -- make sure to mock $franchise as \IBL\Franchise

findAll -- make sure to test method returns \IBL\Franchise instances
findByConference -- make sure to test $conference using null or empty strings

findByConferenceDivision -- make sure to test $conference using null or empty strings

findByNickname -- make sure to test $nickname using null or empty strings

findById -- make sure to test $id using non-integer values

generateMap -- make sure to test $teamsTable using null or empty strings

save -- make sure to mock $franchise as \IBL\Franchise

_insert -- non-public methods are difficult to test in isolation
_insert -- make sure to mock $franchise as \IBL\Franchise

_update -- non-public methods are difficult to test in isolation
_update -- make sure to mock $franchise as \IBL\Franchise

So check the project out on Github, pull requests and patches are welcome and I look forward to building this tool out to meet the needs of other PHP developers.