var_dump and —debug#

If you add a var_dump($variable) to your unit test, you can use the —debug flag when running the unit tests to see the var_dump in the output. This is particularly helpful with arrays or objects.

stderr output#

If you need to output a single variable, or sometimes just a basic message, you can write to stderr, which in turn will push the message out to the screen

fwrite(STDERR, print_r('Message', TRUE));

That’s it. Oh, and I like to use the —tap option for a little more verbose output when running the tests.

Enjoy!

I’ve been running through PHPUnit a bit lately, and sometimes I need to track some of the variables as I’m going through the tests. I’ve found two tricks that have helped…

var_dump and —debug#

If you add a var_dump($variable) to your unit test, you can use the —debug flag when running the unit tests to see the var_dump in the output. This is particularly helpful with arrays or objects.

stderr output#

If you need to output a single variable, or sometimes just a basic message, you can write to stderr, which in turn will push the message out to the screen

fwrite(STDERR, print_r('Message', TRUE));

That’s it. Oh, and I like to use the —tap option for a little more verbose output when running the tests.

Enjoy!