Automated Testing is a vital part of the development cycle, as it decreases the amount of time developers must spend making sure certain functionality works, and prevents new patches from breaking areas of functionality that are covered by the test suite. As you may have guessed, Automated Tests are simply sets of functionality tests that are automatically run as new features are developed, bugs are fixed, and changes are made to the codebase. Nothing is merged into the core phpBB repository without ensuring that whatever changes are being made do not break any existing functionality. If any tests fail, the developer is able to save time and energy that would have been spent later on, when a bug report would have been filed, by finding the problem and fixing it up front. Not only does this help by increasing the efficiency of the development cycle, but it also improves the quality of the software as a whole, because we can be certain that all features work as intended without having to manually test each one every time something is changed.
That sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, it is. The only problem is, only a very small portion of the code is actually covered by tests. One reason for this is because the automated tests have not been around for as long as the phpBB3 codebase, so they have had to be written long after the features they are testing have been merged, rather than in conjunction with the features themselves. Another reason is that there are two types of tests that need to be written: unit tests and functional tests.
Unit tests are simply tests that attempt to run certain peices of code that do not require a webserver or phpBB installation to work. These tests are generally easier and faster because all of the information they need is readily available and hardcoded into the test suite.
On the other hand, Functional tests are needed to run functionality that requires a phpBB installation. For instance, if you want to test whether an authentication plugin works, you have to actually be able to test logging into a board. For that, you need a database with a user account. You also need to be able to test that a cookie is sent. Unit tests cannot handle that, but Functional tests, are able to simulate browsing and using the forum almost just like a normal user.
However, functional tests cover even less of the code and functionality than unit tests do, and time that is spent writing functional tests is time that is not spent writing new functionality or expanding on existing functionality. So while we need functional tests to reap the benefits I explained above, it does not make sense to devote all of our time to writing tests and therefore have a significant “dry period”, during which no new or changed functionality is incorporated into the software.
This is where you come in. I, like many of you, was kind of intimidated when I first started to contribute to the core of phpBB. I felt much safer writing MODs because I knew my work would not be scrutinized as much as if I were to submit a patch to the core (that is not to say that the MOD team does not carefully review each and every MOD, but rather, that my code would likely not be viewed by as many people and would not be held to as high a standard). However, I found that by writing functional tests, I not only was able to contribute to the betterment of the software, but I also was able to better learn how things worked and how I could therefore use the things I learned in not only my MODs but also my core patches.
So all of that to say, there is plenty of work to be done and we would love to see contributions to our test framework from our vast, talented phpBB community. As I said, these contributions help not only the software and phpBB community as a whole, but also can give you the knowledge and skills you need to improve your MODs and, should you decide to, your patches to the phpBB software.
There is a wealth of information in the phpBB Development Wiki (see Automated Tests) to get you started with writing and running tests. And if you have a question or need help understanding how to do something, you are welcome to ask me or another developer in the #phpbb-dev IRC channel.
