I’m in the process of setting up a continuous integration environment for a new PHP project I’m starting. On our previous project, which was Java based, we used the following tools to support similar requirements on that project in order to allow us to implement the project using a test driven approach and automate build generation:

• Cruise Control – For setting up a Continuous Build process.
• Ant – A Java based build tool.
• JUnit – A Java Based xunit testing framework
• PMD – A tool that checks for common coding standards violations.
• Corbetura – A Java based code coverage too that calculates the percentage of code accessed by unit tests

I’ve managed to set up an analogous process for our PHP project using the following tools:

• Cruise Control – For setting up a Continuous Build process.
• Ant – A Java based build tool.
• PHPUnit – An Xunit testing framework for PHP
• PHP_CodeSniffer – A PHP tool that checks for common coding standards violations.
• Xdebug – Debugging tool, which when combined with PHPUnit, can provide Code Coverage Metrics

It seems to work quite well, here’s the relatively simple ant build script that controls it all.

I’m currently running this on a windows machine although it’s trivial to change it work in an *ix based environment which I’ll probably configure in the next day or so. I had a couple of problems installing PHP_CodeSniffer although it was because I hadn’t installed PEAR properly. If you have any problems installing PHP_CodeSniffer under Windows then follow these instructions:

To install PEAR under windows do the following, which assumes you have PHP5.2x installed in c:\php :

  cd c:\\php
  go-pear.bat

The interactive installer presents you with some options, if you follow the defaults you should be fine.
Once PEAR has installed you can install PHP_CodeSniffer like this:

  cd c:\\php
  pear install PHP_CodeSniffer-beta

This will download the PHP_CodeSniffer package and install into into your php/PEAR folder.

Once this is done you can check to see if it has installed by calling phpcs with -h flag which will produce the following:

C:\\php>phpcs -h
Usage: phpcs [-nlvi] [--report=] [--standard=]
    [--generator=] [--extensions=]  ...
        -n           Do not print warnings
        -l           Local directory only, no recursion
        -v[v][v]     Print verbose output
        -i           Show a list of installed coding standards
        --help       Print this help message
        --version    Print version information
               One or more files and/or directories to check
         A comma separated list of file extensions to check
                     (only valid if checking a directory)
           The name of the coding standard to use
          The name of a doc genertor to use
                     (forces doc generation instead of checking)
             Print either the "full" or "summary" report

Now try it out …

C:\\php>phpcs C:\\Projects\\dummyproject\\test\\

FILE: C:\\Projects\\dummyproject\\test\\AllTests.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 7 ERROR(S) AND 0 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 7 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1 | ERROR | End of line character is invalid; expected "\n" but found "\r\n"
  2 | ERROR | Missing file doc comment
  3 | ERROR | Constants must be uppercase; expected 'PHPUNIT_MAIN_METHOD' but
    |       | found 'PHPUnit_MAIN_METHOD'
 12 | ERROR | Missing class doc comment
 14 | ERROR | Missing function doc comment
 19 | ERROR | Missing function doc comment
 30 | ERROR | Constants must be uppercase; expected PHPUNIT_MAIN_METHOD but
    |       | found PHPUnit_MAIN_METHOD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Check the documentation for what the various command line switches do, but you can generate summary reports as well on an entire directory tree:

C:\\php>phpcs --report=summary --standard=Squiz C:\\Projects\\dummyproject\\test\\

PHP CODE SNIFFER REPORT SUMMARY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FILE                                                            ERRORS  WARNINGS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C:\\Projects\\dummyproject\\test\\AllTests.php                  24      0
C:\\Projects\\dummyproject\\test\\NodeTest.php                  10      0
C:\\Projects\\dummyproject\\test\\NodeTypeTest.php              11      0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A TOTAL OF 45 ERROR(S) AND 0 WARNING(S) WERE FOUND IN 3 FILE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

…

Overall I’m quite happy with this set up which for the most part was pretty straight forward. I have no doubt it will evolve over time but I think it’s a good foundation on which to build upon.