Read about phpRack in ​php|Architect June 2010: "Integration Testing with phpRack Framework".

phpRack is a light framework for automation of integration tests. By integration tests we mean software modules that should be executed in the production environment, in order to validate that said environment is configured as expected. For example your product is a web2.0 application which depends on proper configuration of PHP, Apache, MySQL and availability of YouTube, Flickr and GoogleMaps API's. Your product is properly tested with unit tests (obviously you're using stubs for said services and components). When the product is deployed to the production environment, you want to be sure that the services you need are configured and available. If they are not — you want to get a notification about it before your end-users. And you want to get a detailed notification.

This is when phpRack is mandatory. You shall add phpRack to your project, and write a number of tests. All these tests will be executed when requested and will produce a detailed report, both only and by email. It will save you a lot of time during deployment and later, during maintenance of your product.

Quick Start

To start using phpRack you should do three operations:

• Upload phpRack library to your server
• Create phprack.php file in your public_html directory
• Create PHP integration tests in your rack-tests directory

Let's do them one by one:

Upload phpRack library

Download ZIP archive of phpRach and unpack it to public_html/phpRack or some other directory on your production server.

Create phprack.php

You should create phprack.php in your project's public directory (see full reference), e.g.:

<?php
// this param is mandatory, others are optional
$phpRackConfig = array(
    'dir' => '../rack-tests',
);
// absolute path to the bootstrap script on your server
include '../library/phpRack/bootstrap.php';

Create integration tests

Write integration tests in the directory rack-tests, each one has to extend the class PhpRack_Test (see full list of assertions). For example, file MyTest.php:

<?php
class MyTest extends phpRack_Test
{
    public function testPhpVersionIsCorrect()
    {
        $this->assert->php->version
            ->atLeast('5.2');
    }
    public function testPhpExtensionsExist()
    {
        $this->assert->php->extensions
            ->isLoaded('xsl')
            ->isLoaded('simplexml')
            ->isLoaded('fileinfo');
    }
}

Go to this URL: http://your-website-url/phprack.php and enjoy. Try this link to see what you're going to see on your site: ​http://www.phprack.com/phprack.php.

How to contribute?

First, fork our repository and clone it to your local machine and install Vagrant. Then, run:

vagrant up

A virtual machine with pre-installed requisites will be ready in a few minutes. Login to it and go to /vagrant directory:

vagrant ssh

Then, in the virtual machine run:

phing

All tests should pass. If you see any problems, please submit an new issue to us.

After you make your changes don't forget to run phing again to make sure you didn't break anything. When ready, submit a pull request.