Manual:PHP unit testing/Running the tests

Entrypoints for running the tests
If you have not already, run  in the root of the MediaWiki core repository.

vendor/bin/phpunit
The standard way to run PHPUnit is with the entrypoint located at

Composer script
Run all the unit tests for MediaWiki core and all extensions and skins:

Wrapper script
Unit tests are run from the command line as there is no graphical user interface as of January 2012. Although phpunit provide a bootstrapping facility, we use a wrapper script. It makes sure the MediaWiki framework is properly initialized using your  file, then directly call PHPUnit API. Invoking  as-is will simply not work.

The wrapper script  is located in the   directory and is invoked using the PHP interpreter:

$ cd tests/phpunit $ php phpunit.php

The wrapper script is itself a MediaWiki maintenance script, and will pass all arguments to PHPUnit. To get a list of possible arguments have a look at.

Test database
That the test harness is used for unit and integration tests, and the latter often require a database to test against. This is done by cloning the database (the one that's referenced in LocalSettings.php) to temporary tables and running the tests against those.

Because of this, it is important that the MediaWiki installation being tested has an up to date and correct database, or error messages (such as "TestUser.php: Can't create user on real database") will result.

Using default test groups
To make it easier to newcomers, tests/phpunit in core has a makefile providing some sane targets that are easier to remember than some long shell commands. You will obviously need the make utility. The sub-group names may look obscure to you right now, we will describe them later on in the writing unit tests section.
 * Entering  runs sub-groups of tests.
 * Entering  prints the list of targets and their descriptions.

For instance, to run all tests that do not require a database connection, specify the make target :

As said above, a list of other targets is always available using the special help target.

Running other sets of tests
Running group of tests might be long and tedious, specifically when you are only altering a very specific part of the MediaWiki codebase. For example, you might be implementing some IPv6 functionality in the includes/libs/IP.php file. In the test suite, that file code is covered by includes/libs/IPTest.php which you can pass as an argument to our PHPUnit wrapper.

Below, "wiki" is the name of the database to use, which is required as of 1.29, but you may have to omit it in older versions of MediaWiki.

Running the individual tests from includes/libs/IPTest.php looks like:

To see the name of each running test, uses the Test Anything Protocol format available in PHPUnit using :

This format is great to filter the output for non passing test. For example with the grep command:

phpunit also provide a kind of checklist that give out a great output for people not familiar with tests or shells: the testdox format:

An unchecked box, means the test failed, such as the one named « RC ns filter association » above.

You can also run tests within a specific directory. For example, to run all of the language-related tests: php phpunit.php languages/

Running a particular sub-group
prints the available test groups. To run a particular test group, pass it to phpunit, for example: $ php tests/phpunit/phpunit.php --group Editing