Its quite an honor and a challenge. [...] We hope together we have enough brain cycles to push put what is probably the biggest minor release in the history of PHP. Just take a look at the todo list and the scratchpad detailing all the additions.

He also asks for any help they can get to help identify all of the changes for the new release and to do the usual testing against the current CVS version with applications to see if there's any breakage. The more you test now, the less that has to be fixed post-release - so get out there and get testing!

Highlights in this month's edition include:

• PHP 5.2.6 is growing up fast, thanks to no PHP 5.3
• PHP 5 reaches 38.93% of PHP market share, up 2%
• They passed the mark of 30 millions domain tested this month

You can get the full stats (including the numbers and some great graphs) from the Nexen.net website - full stats, evolution stats.

Symfony is one of the few PHP frameworks that gives you basic tools for starting to write tests. [...] Symfony also provides an extension of this class called sfTestBrowser, designed especially for functional tests, which has all the abilities of the sfBrowser object plus some smart assert methods.

He uses this sfTestBrowser object to run an example test on a same get() call's response. It should match the regular expression of "/This is a temporary page/" but doesn't so it fails. Writing up tests like this for new parts of your application first would be considered test-driven development and the Symfony framework makes that simple.

It is hard to test code that uses singletons. The same is true for code that uses global variables. Typically, the code you want to test is coupled strongly with a global variable and you cannot control its creation. An additional problem is the fact that one test's change to a global variable might break another test.

You can disable the backup option if you'd like by setting the $backupGlobals option in your test to false. This lets PHPUnit know that you want to leave the globals (and superglobals) alone during the run.

"Unit testing is a test that validates that individual units of source code are working properly", that's what Wikipedia says about unit testing. That's general knowledge.

But what motivates me even more than the increased software quality is that it saves me development time. This sounds odd as you might believe that TDD means writing more code.

A real-life example is included (an internal invoicing system) with the steps they'd follow to test it normally via the browser (slow) or through the automated tests (fast!)

I've recently been working on a project trying to take an existing customized wordpress site and create automated integration tests around parts of it. I'm using phpUnderControl, phpUnit, Selenium RC, Firefox, Xvfb (virtual frame buffer) and...well, I think that's it.

He mentions the two issues he came across, both with the WordPress software (the "siteurl" setting and the pathing for the templates). He recommends that application code be portable to avoid problems like these. Applications that can be dropped in anywhere and "just work" can help not only make life easier for the installer but also for the tester.

It took us about 2 years to get the last 5% and I believe most of the kudos should go to IBM people, who continue to contribute lots of new tests. I hope that the Testfest will help us to speed up this process.

There are still a lot of items in the red that could use some tests, so if you're looking to help out write up some tests or check your area for a TestFest event to get some help.

One of the implications of following the rule is related to the whole www vs no-www question. Basically you should always use www if you're planning to use any other sub-domains and you want them cookie-free. This is because you have no way to set a cookie only to the top-level domain.

His code sets cookies for the ".phpied.com", "phpied.com" and "www.phpied.com" domains. Since the domains without the "www" offer a bit broader range of possible matches, he recommends that if you're ever going to use any kind of subdomain, you'll want to use the more broad cookie to cover it.

Thankfully, PHP provides the interactive shell, allowing you to test out PHP interactively with immediate feedback. Here's how to take advantage of this mature feature of PHP.

With the help of the "-a" flag on the command line, the PHP binary will hand you an environment where you can code PHP and instantly see the results. He does mention a few quirks that make it different than working with PHP through a web server, namely moving in and out of code blocks and remembering to finish out with a semi-colon when the line is done.

It allows you to run all of the following: all core testcases at once, all core test groups, each core test case individually, all application-specific testcases at once, all application-specific test groups and each core test case individually. It also supports plugins, which means you can run plugin cases and groups.

He includes some samples of how it works - a few command line calls and what the output looks like.