Re: PHP Unit tests

Big Thanks to all you this is very helpful information
(I hope my boss will google this page ;) )
Yes we are using APC for application variables and
some seralized array that we need on every page load
and memcached for HTML caches as we need to deliver page
in less then 0.2 seconds in busy environment (20 req/s)
We don't have strong documentation as we are moving
from startup level to more corporate level where we will need to
compile stronger documentation for apps.
What I mean about strong types is this simple situation

if( ! $price) then do something
this is a common way we do coding and it is very unsecure but
PHP allows it, and most of the time it works
but sometimes people are lazy
and forgot to take into account all possibilities of $price

so the above code to be more secure would become
if($price==='' || $price === null || $price === false) then do something

and we cant use is_numeric()  as $price can sometime be 'unknown'

and this is because of stong types, so from here we can see that
PHP programmer should be much more intuitive and smarter ;) then java one

For unit test we do use same approach as Zend F. do
but it is hell to manage those test once one of classes changes
(this is more of a laziness)

Finally I think that PHP is completely OK for us
RnR is just a language that my boss likes he is kinda fancy as RnR is :)
Java is very hard in a way that it doesn't have natively
strong support for web environment (file uploads Cookies POST etc)
but using apache libs and solid framework can be strong platform
but PHP has most of that already bundled so I will stick to PHP ;)

thanks again for fast response.


Claus Jørgensen wrote:
 > Hey
 >
 > 1. Strong types is not nessary in a scripting language, if it causes
 > headaches it's due to poor documentation which is far worse than just
 > the lack of strong types.
 >
 > The reason things are developed in scripting languages is to avoid *too*
 > much typing overheat. I can't say that strong typing ever would have
 > solved an issue in php, that couldn't been solved by the nessary
 > documentation.
 >
 > 2. There is alot of unit tests frameworks for php, have you not looked
 > in /test/ that is shipped with Zend Framework ? http://www.phpunit.de/
 > is one of the more populare , and one of the lead developers being
 > Sebastian Bergmann from eZ Components.
 >
 > 3. That will be nailed in PHP6, but my experience is that Ruby and Java
 > ain't much better, and Ruby most likely would relay on the same libs as
 > php does (iconv).
 >
 > 4. http://pecl.php.net/APC <http://pecl.php.net/APC> , www.php.net/APC
 > <http://www.php.net/APC> , op-code cache for php5 :-) Works like a charm.
 >
 > And regarding Java... your boss should look at history, and perhaps
 > explain him how horrible struts is :-)
 >
 > 2007/6/22, Bojan Tesanovic <[email protected]
 > <mailto:[email protected]>>:
 >
 >     Hi there,
 >
 >     I am Web developer and front-end team lead of classifieds search
 >     engine site.
 >     We are using php 5.2.0 and Zend Framework to power our web site.
 >     But lately my manager wants to jump to another platform RnR or Java
 >     which I dislike though he is right in some points.
 >
 >     1. Lack of strong types which can cause lot of headaches
 >     2. Missing of PHP Unit framework that is supported by Zend or PHP
 >     community
 >     3. Robust UTF-8 and I18N support which will I hope be nailed in PHP6
 >     4. Maybe a way to compress source or make opcode of php files in one
 >     file and deploy it to web server
 >         this is very helpful in production environments and large systems
 >
 >     So it would be of great importance for PHP to tackle #1 and #2 and
 >     to dive more deeply in
 >     Enterprise waters.
 >
 >
 >     best
 >     Bojan Tesanovic
 >     http://www.classicio.com/
 >
 >
 >
 >
 > --
 > Sincerely
 >   Claus Jørgensen, Denmark
 >   Mobil: +45 30 13 27 32
 >   http://www.dragons-lair.org


-- 
Bojan Tesanovic
http://www.classicio.com/