PHP Testing and Debugging

As a freelance programmer, I have built quite a few web applications over the years, some pretty and some not-so-pretty. Before I got involved in PHP, I had worked mostly in Java, with its rigid and forced programming style. With PHP, of course, it s easy to get lazy and write sloppy code, and PHP will always perform well no matter what. Recently, however, I took over maintenance of a web application which set new lows for maintainability, quali...

When debugging a site that s live, viewing the progression of your script can save quite a bit of time, resulting in considerably less complaints. However, it s absolutely essential that you avoid throwing your variables to the screen while visitors are viewing your pages. One way to avoid exposing your sensitive data, while also giving yourself a live printout of your variables is by making them visible to only you and/or your team. The techniq...

Debugging is an important part of coding. One way to make the debugging process easier is to write quality code to begin with. This article, the first of two parts, will point out some of the most common coding errors, and help you identify problems in your code. It is excerpted from chapter 12 of

If you have ever written your own scripts in PHP or another programming language, you know the frustration that comes from debugging your work. Write an HTML page and leave off a closing /table tag, or even something vital like the body tag, and most of the browsers in use today will display the page as you intended, even with the errors. But programming languages in general - and PHP specifically - are not nearly as forgiving; le...

In this final part of a three-part series on unit testing, we discuss the use of graphical interfaces, unit testing in a web environment, and more. The article is excerpted from chapter six of the book

As a general rule, web applications should be tested thoroughly. Unfortunately, in practice, testing is spotty and often overlooked. As an alternative to manual testing I often find myself creating small PHP scripts to parse my pages. I run them regularly to decide if my last changes did more harm then good. That s what regression testing is all about, checking to make sure your application hasn t taken steps backward. But it always seemed like ...

Imagine you are in an interview. You are at the stage where the interviewer has failed to notice the gaps in your CV and is actually forced to ask you some questions. Not having prepared, their expression drains they are forced to think up one on the spot. They can only come up with... What are the stages in developing software?. Pah, easy! Design, Code, Test and Debug. A quick handshake later and you know you are in the ...

The release of PHP 5 in July 2004 marked a significant leap in PHP s evolution--it enabled the development of large-scale applications to leverage the productivity, maintainability, and reusability of object-oriented design. While the language features introduced in PHP 5 are vital for this, the development of large-scale applications requires additional tools and techniques to be viable. // ); //]] PHPUnit is such a tool. It supports the develo...

Having a formalized unit testing infrastructure for your projects will save you time in the long run, especially when looking for bugs in code. This article introduces you to setting up a unit testing framework. It is excerpted from chapter 6 of the book

Last week, we introduced you to setting up a unit testing framework. This week, you will learn about running multiple tests simultaneously, creating more informative error messages, and more. This article, the second of three parts, is excerpted from chapter 6 of the book

In this article, I ll discuss some common web-application security flaws and then demonstrate how to detect them. In the process of auditing web applications for security flaws, I will also present a PHP script that will act as a web proxy server, allowing us to intercept and alter HTTP requests between the web browser and the target web server. As we will see, this PHP script will aid us tremendously in testing for security flaws. Let s start by...