In this article by Pablo Solar Vilariño and Carlos Pérez Sánchez, the author of the book, PHP Microservices, we will see the following topics:

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

• Test-driven development
• Behavior-driven development
• Acceptance test-driven development
• Tools

Test-driven development

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is part of Agile philosophy, and it appears to solve the common developer’s problem that shows when an application is evolving and growing, and the code is getting sick, so the developers fix the problems to make it run but every single line that we add can be a new bug or it can even break other functions.

Test-driven development is a learning technique that helps the developer to learn about the domain problem of the application they are going to build, doing it in an iterative, incremental, and constructivist way:

• Iterative because the technique always repeats the same process to get the value
• Incremental because for each iteration, we have more unit tests to be used
• Constructivist because it is possible to test all we are developing during the process straight away, so we can get immediate feedback

Also, when we finish developing each unit test or iteration, we can forget it because it will be kept from now on throughout the entire development process, helping us to remember the domain problem through the unit test; this is a good approach for forgetful developers.

It is very important to understand that TDD includes four things: analysis, design, development, and testing; in other words, doing TDD is understanding the domain problem and correctly analyzing the problem, designing the application well, developing well, and testing it. It needs to be clear; TDD is not just about implementing unit tests, it is the whole process of software development.

TDD perfectly matches projects based on microservices because using microservices in a large project is dividing it into little microservices or functionalities, and it is like an aggrupation of little projects connected by a communication channel. The project size is independent of using TDD because in this technique, you divide each functionality into little examples, and to do this, it does not matter if the project is big or small, and even less when our project is divided by microservices. Also, microservices are still better than a monolithic project because the functionalities for the unit tests are organized in microservices, and it will help the developers to know where they can begin using TDD.

How to do TDD?

Doing TDD is not difficult; we just need to follow some steps and repeat them by improving our code and checking that we did not break anything. TDD involves the following steps:

• Write the unit test: It needs to be the simplest and clearest test possible, and once it is done, it has to fail; this is mandatory. If it does not fail, there is something that we are not doing properly.
• Run the tests: If it has errors (it fails), this is the moment to develop the minimum code to pass the test, just what is necessary, do not code additional things. Once you develop the minimum code to pass the test, run the test again (step two); if it passes, go to the next step, if not then fix it and run the test again.
• Improve the test: If you think it is possible to improve the code you wrote, do it and run the tests again (step two). If you think it is perfect then write a new unit test (step one).

To do TDD, it is necessary to write the tests before implementing the function; if the tests are written after the implementation has started, it is not TDD; it is just testing.

If we start implementing the application without testing and it is finished, or if we start creating unit tests during the process, we are doing the classic testing and we are not approaching the TDD benefits. Developing the functions without prior testing, the abstract idea of the domain problem in your mind can be wrong or may even be clear at the start but during the development process it can change or the concepts can be mixed. Writing the tests after that, we are checking if all the ideas in our main were correct after we finished the implementation, so probably we have to change some methods or even whole functionalities after spend time coding.

Obviously, testing is always better than not testing, but doing TDD is still better than just classic testing.

Why should I use TDD?

TDD is the answer to questions such as:

• Where shall I begin?
• How can I do it?
• How can I write code that can be modified without breaking anything?
• How can I know what I have to implement?

The goal is not to write many unit tests without sense but to design it properly following the requirements. In TDD, we do not to think about implementing functions, but we think about good examples of functions related with the domain problem in order to remove the ambiguity created by the domain problem.

In other words, by doing TDD, we should reproduce a specific function or case of use in X examples until we get the necessary examples to describe the function or task without ambiguity or misinterpretations.

TDD can be the best way to document your application.

Using other methodologies of software development, we start thinking about how the architecture is going to be, what pattern is going to be used, how the communication between microservices is going to be, and so on, but what happens if once we have all this planned, we realize that this is not necessary? How much time is going to pass until we realize that? How much effort and money are we going to spend?

TDD defines the architecture of our application by creating little examples in many iterations until we realize what the architecture is; the examples will slowly show us the steps to follow in order to define what the best structures, patterns, or tools to use are, avoiding expenditure of resources during the firsts stages of our application.

This does not mean that we are working without an architecture; obviously, we have to know if our application is going to be a website or a mobile app and use a proper framework. What is going to be the interoperability in the application? In our case it will be an application based on microservices, so it will give us support to start creating the first unit tests. The architectures that we remove are the architectures on top of the architecture, in other words, the guidelines to develop an application as always. TDD will produce an architecture without ambiguity from unit testing.

• TDD is not cure-all: In other words, it does not give the same results to a senior developer as to a junior developer, but it is useful for the entire team. Let’s look at some advantages of using TDD:
• Code reuse: Creates every functionality with only the necessary code to pass the tests in the second stage (Green) and allows you to see if there are more functions using the same code structure or parts of a specific function, so it helps you to reuse the previous code you wrote.
• Teamwork is easier: It allows you to be confident with your team colleagues. Some architects or senior developers do not trust developers with poor experience, and they need to check their code before committing the changes, creating a bottleneck at that point, so TDD helps to trust developers with less experience.
• Increases communication between team colleagues: The communication is more fluent, so the team share their knowledge about the project reflected on the unit tests.
• Avoid overdesigning application in the first stages: As we said before, doing TDD allows you to have an overview of the application little by little, avoiding the creation of useless structures or patterns in your project, which, maybe, you will trash in the future stages.
• Unit tests are the best documentation: The best way to give a good point of view of a specific functionality is reading its unit test. It will help to understand how it works instead of human words.
• Allows discovering more use cases in the design stage: In every test you have to create, you will understand how the functionality should work better and all the possible stages that a functionality can have.
• Increases the feeling of a job well done: In every commit of your code, you will have the feeling that it was done properly because the rest of the unit tests passes without errors, so you will not be worried about other broken functionalities.
• Increases the software quality: During the step of refactoring, we spend our efforts on making the code more efficient and maintainable, checking that the whole project still works properly after the changes.

TDD algorithm

The technical concepts and steps to follow the TDD algorithm are easy and clear, and the proper way to make it happen improves by practicing it. There are only three steps, called red, green, and refactor:

Red – Writing the unit tests

It is possible to write a test even when the code is not written yet; you just need to think about whether it is possible to write a specification before implementing it. So, in this first step you should consider that the unit test you start writing is not like a unit test, but it is like an example or specification of the functionality.

In TDD, this first example or specification is not immovable; in other words, the unit test can be modified in the future. Before starting to write the first unit test, it is necessary to think about how the Software Under Test (SUT) is going to be. We need to think about how the SUT code is going to be and how we would check that it works they way we want it to.

The way that TDD works drives us to firstly design what is more comfortable and clear if it fits the requirements.

Green – Make the code work

Once the example is written, we have to code the minimum to make it pass the test; in other words, set the unit test to green. It does not matter if the code is ugly and not optimized, it will be our task in the next step and iterations.

In this step, the important thing is only to write the necessary code for the requirements without unnecessary things. It does not mean writing without thinking about the functionality, but thinking about it to be efficient. It looks easy but you will realize that you will write extra code the first time.

If you concentrate on this step, new questions will appear about the SUT behavior with different entries, but you should be strong and avoid writing extra code about other functionalities related to the current one. Instead of coding them, take notes to convert them into functionalities in the next iterations.

Refactor – Eliminate redundancy

Refactoring is not the same as rewriting code. You should be able to change the design without changing the behavior.

In this step, you should remove the duplicity in your code and check if the code matches the principles of good practices, thinking about the efficiency, clarity, and future maintainability of the code. This part depends on the experience of each developer.

The key to good refactoring is making it in small steps

To refactor a functionality, the best way is to change a little part and then execute all the available tests; if they pass, continue with another little part, until you are happy with the obtained result.

Behavior-driven development

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is a process that broadens the TDD technique and mixes it with other design ideas and business analyses provided to the developers, in order to improve the software development.

In BDD, we test the scenarios and classes’ behavior in order to meet the scenarios, which can be composed by many classes.

It is very useful to use a DSL in order to have a common language to be used by the customer, project owner, business analyst, or developers. The goal is to have a ubiquitous language.

What is BDD?

As we said before, BDD is an AGILE technique based on TDD and ATDD, promoting the collaboration between the entire team of a project.

The goal of BDD is that the entire team understands what the customer wants, and the customer knows what the rest of the team understood from their specifications. Most of the times, when a project starts, the developers don’t have the same point of view as the customer, and during the development process the customer realizes that, maybe, they did not explain it or the developer did not understand it properly, so it adds more time to changing the code to meet the customer’s needs.

So, BDD is writing test cases in human language, using rules, or in a ubiquitous language, so the customer and developers can understand it. It also defines a DSL for the tests.

How does it work?

It is necessary to define the features as user stories (we will explain what this is in the ATDD section of this article) and their acceptance criteria.

Once the user story is defined, we have to focus on the possible scenarios, which describe the project behavior for a concrete user or a situation using DSL. The steps are: Given [context], When [event occurs], Then [Outcome].

To sum up, the defined scenario for a user story gives the acceptance criteria to check if the feature is done.

Acceptance Test-Driven Development

Perhaps, the most important methodology in a project is the Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) or Story Test-Driven Development (STDD); it is TDD but on a different level.

The acceptance (or customer) tests are the written criteria for a project meeting the business requirements that the customer demands. They are examples (like the examples in TDD) written by the project owner. It is the start of development for each iteration, the bridge between Scrum and agile development.

In ATDD, we start the implementation of our project in a way different from the traditional methodologies. The business requirements written in human language are replaced by executables agreed upon by some team members and also the customer. It is not about replacing the whole documentation, but only a part of the requirements.

The advantages of using ATDD are the following:

• Real examples and a common language for the entire team to understand the domain
• It allows identifying the domain rules properly
• It is possible to know if a user story is finished in each iteration
• The workflow works from the first steps
• The development does not start until the tests are defined and accepted by the team

ATDD algorithm

The algorithm of ATDD is like that of TDD but reaches more people than only the developers; in other words, doing ATDD, the tests of each story are written in a meeting that includes the project owners, developers, and QA technicians because the entire team must understand what is necessary to do and why it is necessary, so they can see if it is what the code should do. The ATDD cycle is depicted in the following diagram:

Discuss

The starting point of the ATDD algorithm is the discussion. In this first step, the business has a meeting with the customer to clarify how the application should work, and the analyst should create the user stories from that conversation. Also, they should be able to explain the conditions of satisfaction of every user story in order to be translated into examples.

By the end of the meeting, the examples should be clear and concise, so we can get a list of examples of user stories in order to cover all the needs of the customer, reviewed and understood for him. Also, the entire team will have a project overview in order to understand the business value of the user story, and in case the user story is too big, it could be divided into little user stories, getting the first one for the first iteration of this process.

Distill

High-level acceptance tests are written by the customer and the development team. In this step, the writing of the test cases that we got from the examples in the discussion step begins, and the entire team can take part in the discussion and help clarify the information or specify the real needs of that.

The tests should cover all the examples that were discovered in the discussion step, and extra tests could be added during this process bit by bit till we understand the functionality better.

At the end of this step, we will obtain the necessary tests written in human language, so the entire team (including the customer) can understand what they are going to do in the next step. These tests can be used like a documentation.

Develop

In this step, the development of acceptance test cases is begun by the development team and the project owner. The methodology to follow in this step is the same as TDD, the developers should create a test and watch it fail (Red) and then develop the minimum amount of lines to pass (Green). Once the acceptance tests are green, this should be verified and tested to be ready to be delivered.

During this process, the developers may find new scenarios that need to be added into the tests or even if it needs a large amount of work, it could be pushed to the user story.

At the end of this step, we will have software that passes the acceptance tests and maybe more comprehensive tests.

Demo

The created functionality is shown by running the acceptance test cases and manually exploring the features of the new functionality. After the demonstration, the team discusses whether the user story was done properly and it meets the product owner’s needs and decides if it can continue with the next story.

Tools

After knowing more about TDD and BDD, it is time to explain a few tools you can use in your development workflow. There are a lot of tools available, but we will only explain the most used ones.

Composer

Composer is a PHP tool used to manage software dependencies. You only need to declare the libraries needed by your project and the composer will manage them, installing and updating when necessary. This tool has only a few requirements: if you have PHP 5.3.2+, you are ready to go. In the case of a missing requirement, the composer will warn you.

You could install this dependency manager on your development machine, but since we are using Docker, we are going to install it directly on our PHP-FPM containers. The installation of composer in Docker is very easy; you only need to add the following rule to the Dockerfile:

RUN curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --install-"dir=/usr/bin/ --filename=composer

PHPUnit

Another tool we need for our project is PHPUnit, a unit test framework. As before, we will be adding this tool to our PHP-FPM containers to keep our development machine clean. If you are wondering why we are not installing anything on our development machine except for Docker, the response is clear. Having everything in the containers will help you avoid any conflict with other projects and gives you the flexibility of changing versions without being too worried.

Add the following RUN command to your PHP-FPM Dockerfile, and you will have the latest PHPUnit version installed and ready to use:

RUN curl -sSL https://phar.phpunit.de/phpunit.phar -o "/usr/bin/phpunit && chmod +x /usr/bin/phpunit

Now that we have all our requirements too, it is time to install our PHP framework and start doing some TDD stuff. Later, we will continue updating our Docker environment with new tools.

We choose Lumen for our example. Please feel free to adapt all the examples to your favorite framework. Our source code will be living inside our containers, but at this point of development, we do not want immutable containers. We want every change we make to our code to be available instantaneously in our containers, so we will be using a container as a storage volume.

To create a container with our source and use it as a storage volume, we only need to edit our docker-compose.yml and create one source container per each microservice, as follows:

source_battle: 
  image: nginx:stable 
  volumes: 
  - ../source/battle:/var/www/html 
  command: "true"

The above piece of code creates a container image named source_battle, and it stores our battle source (located at ../source/battle from the docker-compose.yml current path). Once we have our source container available, we can edit each one of our services and assign a volume. For instance, we can add the following line in our microservice_battle_fpm and microservice_battle_nginx container descriptions:

volumes_from: 
  - source_battle

Our battle source will be available in our source container in the path, /var/www/html, and the remaining step to install Lumen is to do a simple composer execution. First, you need to be sure that your infrastructure is up with a simple command, as follows:

$ docker-compose up

The preceding command spins up our containers and outputs the log to the standard IO. Now that we are sure that everything is up and running, we need to enter in our PHP-FPM containers and install Lumen.

If you need to know the names assigned to each one of your containers, you can do a $ docker ps and copy the container name.

As an example, we are going to enter the battle PHP-FPM container with the following command:

$ docker exec -it docker_microservice_battle_fpm_1 /bin/bash

The preceding command opens an interactive shell in your container, so you can do anything you want; let’s install Lumen with a single command:

# cd /var/www/html && composer create-project --prefer-dist "laravel/lumen .

Repeat the preceding commands for each one of your microservices.

Now, you have everything ready to start doing Unit tests and coding your application.

Summary

In this article, you learned about test-driven development, behavior-driven development, acceptance test-driven development, and PHPUnit.

Resources for Article:

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Further resources on this subject:

• Running Simpletest and PHPUnit [Article]
• Understanding PHP basics [Article]
• The Multi-Table Query Generator using phpMyAdmin and MySQL [Article]

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