Testing

We are proponents of Test-Driven Development.

For this process we use PHPUnit and the awesome WordPress API Mocking Framework developed by 10Up.

What to Test ?

I used to feel that a ‘unit’ was the smallest possible part of a code base (a method, really). But in the past couple of years I’ve changed my mind. Here’s how I define a unit test, as of October 2011:

A unit test is an automated piece of code that invokes a unit of work in the system and then checks a single assumption about the behavior of that unit of work.

A unit of work is a single logical functional use case in the system that can be invoked by some public interface (in most cases). A unit of work can span a single method, a whole class or multiple classes working together to achieve one single logical purpose that can be verified.

Roy Osherove - Unit Testing Definition