Quality Assurance in PHP Projects

This is an abstract for a chapter from a book on Quality Assurance in PHP Projects.

One of the most important events in large and distributed team projects is the integration of all parts of the software system into a release. Often incompatibilities and hard-to-detect errors surface at that very moment and can harm the success of the project. The remedy for this problem is the practice of Continuous Integration: a merge of all parts of the system as often as possible during the lifecycle of the project.

In this case study, we will take a look into the preconditions to start with Continuous Integration as well as the procedural and technical rationales of this approach. We will take a look at entering Continuous Integration in PHP projects with phpUnderControl, a customization of the popular and established Continuous Integration server software CruiseControl.

Beyond Continuous Integration, this case study introduces the reader to the principles of Static Testing and how to instrument it to gain a better quality. Amongst other tools, the reader will learn how to successfully use tools such as PHP_CodeSniffer, PHP_Depend and phpcpd for Static Code Analysis.

In conclusion, advanced usage scenarios of the discussed tools will be discusses with a particular focus on how to foster further principles of Agile Software Development methodologies and how to solve discrepancies with other targets of agile methodologies.

Manuel Pichler is the creator of phpUnderControl, PHP_Depend, and phpmd. Sebastian Nohn is the Team Lead Quality Assurance at Ligatus GmbH.