Make unittests strict

[kiesel]

Scope of Change

A new check will be introduced to the unittest.TestCase class that will assert
that no PHP notices have been produced while running a test.

Rationale

PHP notices often indicate some kind of defect in a software which is
not critical at first glance but can have a hidden impact whose source
then is hard to spot.
A recent test-run revealed some (real) bugs in XP core packages that went
unnoticed until now and which were found by checking the error stack.

Functionality

A new check will be performed after each test method run.

Note

  Checks on the error registry are only performed when a test case does not
  throw an exception.

Consider this:

<?php
  if (!($exif= exif_read_data('/tmp/image.jpg'))) {
    throw new FormatException('Cannot read EXIF data');
  }
?>

• exif_read_data() will return FALSE which is checked and an exception
  is thrown. A unittest will test for this behaviour using @expect e.g.
• exif_read_data() will also emit a warning explaining why it couldn't
  read the EXIF data.
• This warning contains useful information, so it shouldn't be deleted
  in the above example.

Security considerations

n/a

Speed impact

n/a

Dependencies

n/a

Related documents

• http://xp-framework.net/rfc/contrib/rfc0145.diff
  Implementing patch

[kiesel]

Should this behavior be deactivateable by a @non-strict class annotation?

kiesel, Sun, 25 Nov 2007 12:40:06 +0100