PHP TestFest 2017

Prepare for PHP Test Fest 2009

It’s Wednesday 7/6/2017 and Ben Ramsey emails the UG-ADMIN mailinglist with the subject “PHP TestFest 2017”. I instantaneously think about the 2009 edition which I attended (at Combell, organized by PHPBelgium).

I had a great time during that edition (I even managed to get some test code into PHP source) and was wondering if we could join this years edition with a couple of local user groups.

I co-organize PHP-WVL and currently work for Combell (based in Ghent), so after some chatting with the folks of Ghent PHP, we agreed to join forces and organize this years edition back at Combell.

As the date we’d picked came closer, I had to figure out how to test the code and get them into PHP Source these days, so I could “mentor” the visitors. I still remembered how to write phpt files, but had to figure out the rest of the flow.

I started by listening to PHP Roundtable episode 65 in the car, to get up to speed. Next up: the PHP TestFest website and the excellent video series of Sammy.

For specific questions, the mailing list is perfect, which helped me with some questions about code coverage.

I figured out there is a fork of the PHP source where all pull requests with tests should be created: https://github.com/phpcommunity/phptestfest-php-src/pulls.

Figuring out what to test.

To find code that needs testing, you have a couple of options:

When you look for uncovered code on the gcov site, there are some things you need to take into account:

  • It is possible that the gcov server does not have all PHP modules loaded (making it appear lots of code fragments are uncovered), see — SKIPIF —;
  • Some tests use “exec” or “popen”, making it “untrackable” for the coverage tool (the cli_server test appear to be uncovered for this reason);
  • Not all testfest tests have been merged.

To solve the last problem, I created a fork of the phptestfest fork, where I merged all the approved pull requests in a branch. This way, I can render code coverage for a specific path, including all the phptestfest tests from other users.

Our contribution.

After 2 weeks, we managed to submit 13 pull requests, where most were approved!

#phptestfest

Resources

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!

Controlling a receipt printer with ZeroMQ and PHP

When you create a POS system as a web app, you have the problem that not all the devices are controllable from your server.

In my case I have the following hardware connected to the workstation:

The input hardware is easy, because a barcode scanner is seen as a keyboard, and both devices can communicate to the server through the web browser.

The tricky part is when a sale is completed, and the customer wants a receipt.

Since the printer is connected to the (dummy) workstation and not to the (remote) server, we cannot print the receipt directly.

The solution I used for this problem is ZeroMQ.

On the server I have a PHP process running which binds to 2 ZeroMQ sockets. One (ZMQ::SOCKET_PULL) is waiting for incoming print request from the web app, one (ZMQ::SOCKET_PUB) is publishing a print request to all subscribing workstations.

On the workstation (in my case a Windows laptop with an HP receipt printer connected to it) I have another PHP process running which is waiting for print jobs (on a ZMQ::SOCKET_SUB socket).

I can add the final piece of the puzzle to the web app, by opening a ZMQ::SOCKET_PUSH socket and sending the URL of the receipt page.

Now I have created a lightweight system for controlling the receipt printer, instead of using cronjobs (or scheduled tasks) to check for print jobs.

Some remarks:

  • I could remove the print-dispatcher part, and let the web app connect to the print receiver directly, but I prefer to have a stable part (the binding sockets) on the known server (so both connecting sockets know the host to connect to).
  • The HTML page could be transported over ZeroMQ, but I like the extra request so the web app is sure the receipt is printed.

Finding memory leaks in PHP objects

I recently spent quite some time figuring out why a (cli) php script was eating all the memory. In PHP, memory leaks mostly show up in long running scripts. In my case, it was doing calculations on (a lot of) database records.

The script crashed all the time, because it was running against the memory_limit. After trying to figure out what was going wrong (using Xdebug’s function traces, PHP’s garbage collection, the unset trick of Paul M. Jones, etc…), I turned to a simple but effective manner to inspect the (problem) object.

Write your object to a file from time to time, and diff it.

Dumping your object:

<?php
file_put_contents(
    '/tmp/myobject_' . time() . '.txt',
    print_r($object, true)
);

// do other logic

file_put_contents(
    '/tmp/myobject_' . time() . '.txt',
    print_r($object, true)
);

Now you can see how big your object is getting (just by watching the filesize):

$ ls -al /tmp/myobject_*

And now you can pick two files to actually see what is causing the problem:

$ diff /tmp/myobject_1357140320.txt /tmp/myobject_1357140450.txt
1236a1237,1247
>             [931277dc8ecbbb394b7f5454f64c5d0c] => Array
>                 (
>                     [hash] => 4143484432
>                     [mtime] => 1357137505
>                     [expire] => 1357141105
>                     [tags] => Array
>                         (
>                         )
>
>                 )

In my case Zend_Db_Profiler was enabled and was keeping track of all the queries in memory.

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.

Installing PEAR

This post is just a quick notice/warning for everyone wanting to install PEAR (especially on Windows): always download the latest go-pear.phar from http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar.

Before running the famous php -d phar.require_hash=0 go-pear.phar command, make sure the timestamp of the phar file is somewhere this year. For some reason PHP (and in my case Zend Server CE) always ships with the phar file from 2008…

It will save you a lot of time.

make test every PHP version and send feedback

Since David Coallier’s talk during PHPBenelux, I realized the importance of running make test on all PHP releases and send feedback to PHP.

It is so easy, that I will run it from now on every time a new release is announced.

If you’re running on Mac, you might want to install Xcode, so you can run “make” on command line. If you’re on Linux, you’re all set to go.

How to do it:

  • Open a shell
  • Create a directory (e.g. mkdir ~/src/php)
  • Download the latest version into the directory (e.g. wget http://downloads.php.net/stas/php-5.4.0RC6.tar.gz)
  • Untar the file (e.g. tar -xzf php-5.4.0RC6.tar.gz)
  • Go into the directory and run ./configure, you should get output like:
    checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep
    checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E
    checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /usr/bin/sed
    checking build system type... i386-apple-darwin11.2.0
    checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin11.2.0
    checking target system type... i386-apple-darwin11.2.0
    ...
    Thank you for using PHP. 
  • After that, you can run make and should get a lot of output ending in:
    Build complete.
    Don't forget to run 'make test'.
  • After that, you should do as the previous command suggests and run make test. You should see all tests passing by.
  • After all tests are run, you will get a summary. In my case, I get the message: “You may have found a problem in PHP.”
    Bug #55509 (segfault on x86_64 using more than 2G memory) [Zend/tests/bug55509.phpt]
    Sort with SORT_LOCALE_STRING [ext/standard/tests/array/locale_sort.phpt]
  • Whether you get an error or not, you should always send the report back to PHP. You can do that by just answering Y to the question: “Do you want to send this report now?”
  • Enter your email address and PHP will thank you.

How hard was that?

SOAP-ERROR: Parsing WSDL

If you’re writing or consuming webservices with PHP SOAP, it’s possible you run into the SOAP-ERROR: Parsing WSDL problem once.

The complete error string is:
SOAP-ERROR: Parsing WSDL: Couldn't load from 'http://host/service?wsdl' : <specific error>

If you copy and paste the url (including the ?wsdl parameter) in the browser and you see the WSDL file, the problem lies in the fact that the PHP cannot reach the host.

When you connect to http://host/service, PHP fetches the XML from the WSDL page via fopen(‘http://host/service?wsdl‘) so it can use it to handle the request. In some cases, that request is not routed correct, resulting in the SOAP-ERROR.

Some solutions:

  • Add the hostname in the hostfile of the server (127.0.0.1 hostname).
  • Add the hostname or IP address in the correct VirtualHost (ServerAlias hostname).

You can test the code by adding a file on the server:

<?php
echo htmlentities(file_get_contents('http://host/service?wdsl'));

That way, you know if the server can reach and read the XML file.

Custom URL’s in Zend Framework

I am searching for a url solution in Zend Framework for quite a while now, and I hope the solution I came up with helps other people trying to do the same thing.

More important, I hope more experienced (Zend Framework) developers can point out problems or suggest better solutions for this problem.

The CMS of my company makes it possible for users to create a tree structure of products/sections/chapters/etc… with an unlimited depth. This makes the url they ‘generate’ very variable.

I’ve searched the internet for solutions and for quite a while I used the solution of Jani. Because this completely overrides the Router object, I continued my search via the Zend MVC mailing list and had an extensive look at the Zend_Controller_Router manual page.

During the search Ivo Jansch tweeted about ZF URL’s and pointed me towards chaining, but the solution for my specific problem lies in adding Routes to the route stack.

I wanted to override the default route so that a language is required in the url. To accomplisch this I added an new function in the Bootstrap.php file:

protected function _initLanguageRoute()
{
    $this->bootstrap('frontController');
    $fc = $this->frontController;
    $router = $fc->getRouter();
    $route = new Zend_Controller_Router_Route(
        ':language/:controller/:action/*',
        array(
            'module' => 'default',
            'language' => 'nl',
            'controller' => 'index',
            'action' => 'index'
        ),
        array(
            'language' => '[a-z]{2}'
        ),
        $translator
    );
    $router->addRoute('default', $route);
}

To add a variable route (calculated by the CMS), I extended the Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Abstract class so the route could also be used by the Url View helper.

The database I use below, has calculated colums already, but a custom mapping can be calculated in the class as well. As long as the request object is pointed to some controller and action.

class Coudenysj_Controller_Router_Route_Mapping extends Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Abstract
{

    private $_db;


    public function __construct($db)
    {
        $this->_db = $db;
    }

    /**
     * A method to publish the way the route operates.
     *
     * @see Zend/Controller/Router/Rewrite.php:392
     *
     * @return int
     */
    public function getVersion()
    {
        return 1;
    }

    /**
     * The required functions (required by Interface).
     *
     * @param Zend_Config $config The config object with defaults.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public static function getInstance(Zend_Config $config)
    {
        return;
    }

    /**
     * Matches a user submitted path with a previously defined route.
     * Assigns and returns an array of defaults on a successful match.
     *
     * @param string $path Path used to match against this routing map
     *
     * @return array|false An array of assigned values or a false on a mismatch
     */
    public function match($path)
    {
        $path = trim($path, '/');

        return $this->_db->fetchRow(
            'SELECT lang, controller, action, id
            FROM mapping
            WHERE url = ?;',
            array($path)
        );
    }

    /**
     * Assembles a URL path defined by this route
     *
     * @param array   $data    An array of variable and value pairs used as parameters
     * @param boolean $reset   Not used (required by interface)
     * @param boolean $encode  Not used (required by interface)
     * @param boolean $partial Not used (required by interface)
     *
     * @return string|false Route path with user submitted parameters
     */
    public function assemble($data = array(), $reset = false, $encode = false, $partial = false)
    {
        if (!isset($data['language'])) {
            if (Zend_Registry::isRegistered('Zend_Locale')) {
                $locale = Zend_Registry::get('Zend_Locale');
                $data['language'] = $locale->getLanguage();
            } else {
                return false;
            }
        }
        if (   !isset($data['controller'])
            || !isset($data['action'])
            || !isset($data['id'])
        ) {
            return false;
        }

        $result = $this->_db->fetchRow(
            'SELECT url
            FROM mapping
            WHERE lang = ? AND controller = ? AND action = ? AND id = ?;',
            array(
                $data['language'],
                $data['controller'],
                $data['action'],
                $data['id'],
            )
        );
        return $result['url'];
    }
}

Now I can add a new ‘cms’ route to the Router object in the Bootstrap.php file:

protected function _initMappingRoute()
{
    $db = new Zend_Db::factory(...);
    $this->bootstrap('frontController');
    $fc = $this->frontController;
    $router = $fc->getRouter();
    $router->addRoute(
        'cms', new Coudenysj_Controller_Router_Route_Mapping($db)
    );
}

Remember that the route stack is processed backwards, so the ‘cms’ route is the first one to try and route the url.

This route can now also be used in the view:

echo $this->url(
    array(
        'id' => $id,
        'controller' => $controller,
        'action' => $action
    ),
    'cms' // the name of our route
);

This solution works for me (for now) and suggestions to improve it are very welcome!

3 years ago in Cambridge

Studio 24 logoIt has been around three years now, since I started my internship at Studio 24.

Studio 24 is a Cambrigde (UK) based web agency with over 10 years of expierence, happy to share their knowledge with students willing to learn.

In the last year of my training MCT at Howest (University College West Flanders), I decided to do my internship abroad, so I ended up in the beautiful Cambridge for over 3 months.

With the support of my house mates Leena (SE), Chris (AU), Matthew (UK) & Alex (UK) and my bosses/colleagues Simon, Jonathan, Richard, Edward, David, Dave & Gaëlle, I found my way through Cambridge and the professional web world.

A lot of what I learned in those 3 months, I still use and advocate/implement in my current company. Some examples of technologies, procedures, software, etc… I discoverd or worked with:

Using all these things and the variaty of customers Studio 24 has, resulted in an astonishing list of projects I worked on. So much, I only could use a thirth of them in my presentation for the jury back at home.

Here’s an extraction:

I had a great time, and encourage every student to have a look at the Lifelon Learning programme of the EU, which helped me pay for my accommodation.

Looking back, I’m glad everyone around me ‘pushed’ me in the Cambridge adventure and I would do it again, if I had the change!