Sort Composer packages for your git merging pleasure

A lot of git merge conflicts occur when multiple developers add lines to the end of a file/list. This also happens in composer.json, AppKernel.php, translation files, config/application.config.php, CSS files, CHANGELOG, etc…

diff --cc composer.json
index 62e875e,0c526d8..0000000
--- a/composer.json
+++ b/composer.json
@@@ -10,6 -10,6 +10,10 @@@
      "require": {
          "ramsey/uuid": "^3.0",
          "roave/security-advisories": "dev-master",
++<<<<<<< HEAD
 +        "beberlei/assert": "^2.3@dev"
++=======
+         "miljar/php-exif": "dev-master"
++>>>>>>> exif
      }
  }

A nice solution is that every developer adds lines or blocks to random places in a list or a file, but a better solution is to sort these lines (especially for lists like composer.json, translation files, etc…). This way you insert new lines in “random” places, keeping it clear for everyone how things are added.

diff --git a/changelog.rst b/changelog.rst
index d9db648..886b168 100644
--- a/changelog.rst
+++ b/changelog.rst
@@ -19,7 +19,9 @@ June, 2015
 New Documentation
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

+* `#5423 <https://github.com/symfony/symfony-docs/pull/5423>`_ [Security] add & update doc entries on AbstractVoter implementation (Inoryy, javiereguiluz)
 * `#5401 <https://github.com/symfony/symfony-docs/pull/5401>`_ Added some more docs about the remember me feature (WouterJ)
+* `#5384 <https://github.com/symfony/symfony-docs/pull/5384>`_ Added information about the new date handling in the comparison constraints and Range (webmozart, javiereguiluz)
 * `#5382 <https://github.com/symfony/symfony-docs/pull/5382>`_ Added support for standard Forwarded header (tony-co, javiereguiluz)
 * `#5361 <https://github.com/symfony/symfony-docs/pull/5361>`_ Document security.switch_user event (Rvanlaak)

Full diff on Github

Some tools and hacks that assist you with this:

Something that does not work for composer.json, but something I highly recommend, is to add trailing commas in PHP arrays and to not align code (see the blogpost by Made With Love about “How clean are your diffs?”). This eases up merging too!

Happy merging!

Using multiple databases in phpunit/dbunit with composer

I’m using multiple databases in most of my projects, so having access to multiple databases in my test suite is a must.

phpunit/dbunit is excellent, but you are stuck with one database. The guys at Etsy created very good extensions to fix this problem (MultipleDatabase), but it took me a while to figure out how to use it.

Because PHPUnit is now available via Composer, you can fetch all dependencies with a single command.

The composer.json file to include all dependencies looks like this:

Install the dependencies by (installing and) running composer:

Now you can create a “parent” class to register the databases (mine is called DatabaseTest). Make sure you create a getDatabaseConfigs method (which is required and should return an array of PHPUnit_Extensions_MultipleDatabase_Database). For the fixtures, I use Xml Datasets, which look like this.

I’ve added a getConnection method, so I can use the same assertions as the normal dbunit testcase (see Database Assertions API):

The magic about to happen is quite cool. PHPUnit will read these database configs and use them to make sure all databases and tables are in a known state before every test and does this in following order:

  1. Connect to all databases
  2. TRUNCATE all tables supplied in the database fixture file
  3. Insert all rows supplied in the fixture file
  4. Execute the test
  5. TRUNCATE all tables supplied in the database fixture file

Now you’ll be able to run tests for code making changes in your database without affecting other tests.

Some improvements:

  • Add composer support to Hamcrest (once Hamcrest PHP has moved to GitHub).
  • Add composer support to the Etsy extensions (I’ve submitted a PR, but it won’t work until Hamcrest PHP is on GitHub).
  • See if the getConnection() method can be done in a better way.