Test PHP headers with PHPUnit

Question

I\'m trying to use PHPunit to test a class that outputs some custom headers.

The problem is that on my machine this:

Answer 1

I had a more radical solution, in order to use $_SESSION inside my tested/included files. I edited one of the PHPUnit files at ../PHPUnit/Utils/Printer.php to have a "session_start();" before the command "print $buffer".

It worked for me like a charm. But I think "joonty" user's solution is the best of all up to now.

Answer 2

Use --stderr parameter for getting headers from PHPUnit after your tests.

phpunit --stderr

Answer 3

The issue is that PHPUnit will print a header to the screen and at that point you can't add more headers.

The work around is to run the test in an isolated process. Here is an example

<?php

class FooTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
    /**
     * @runInSeparateProcess
     */
    public function testBar()
    {
        header('Location : http://foo.com');
    }
}

This will result in:

$ phpunit FooTest.php
PHPUnit 3.6.10 by Sebastian Bergmann.

.

Time: 1 second, Memory: 9.00Mb

OK (1 test, 0 assertions)

The key is the @runInSeparateProcess annotation.

If you are using PHPUnit ~4.1 or something and get the error:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Class 'PHPUnit_Util_Configuration' not found in -:378
Stack trace:
#0 {main}
  thrown in - on line 378

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class 'PHPUnit_Util_Configuration' not found in - on line 378

Error: Class 'PHPUnit_Util_Configuration' not found in - on line 378

Call Stack:
    0.0013     582512   1. {main}() -:0

Try add this to your bootstrap file to fix it:

<?php
if (!defined('PHPUNIT_COMPOSER_INSTALL')) {
    define('PHPUNIT_COMPOSER_INSTALL', __DIR__ . '/path/to/composer/vendors/dir/autoload.php');
}

Answer 4

Although running the test in a separate process does fix the problem, there's a noticeable overhead when running a large suite of tests.

My fix was to direct phpunit's output to stderr, like so:

phpunit --stderr <options>

That should fix the problem, and it also means that you don't have to create a wrapper function and replace all occurrences in your code.

Answer 5

As an aside: For me headers_list() kept returning 0 elements. I noticed @titel's comment on the question and figured it deserves special mention here:

Just wanted to cover this if there are some other people interested in this as well. headers_list() doesn't work while running PHPunit (which uses PHP CLI) but xdebug_get_headers() works instead.

HTH

Answer 6

An alternative solution to @runInSeparateProcess is to specify the --process-isolation option when running PHPUnit:

name@host [~/test]# phpunit --process-isolation HeadersTest.php

That is analogous to set the processIsolation="true" option in phpunit.xml.

This solution has similar advantages/disadvantages to specifying the --stderr option, which however did not work in my case. Basically no code changes are necessary, even though there may be a performance hit due to running each test in a separate PHP process.