PHPUnit and Debugging

Lately I’ve been using this simple setup to print stuff to the terminal during PHPUnit runs.

    /**
     * @var bool
     */
    public $debug_on = false;

    /**
     * @param mixed $something
     */
    public
    function debug_print( $something ) {
        if ( ! $this->debug_on ) {
            return;
        }
        fwrite( STDERR, "n" . print_r( $something, true ) . "n" );
    }

Use Case 1

Control debug printing by means of opening and closing “parentheses”:

$tested->debug_on = true;
//...
$tested->debug_print( $stuff );
//...
$tested->debug_on = false;

Notice that you can also control (everything or something) either from the testing or the tested code, the only difference being the use of ´$this´ instead of ´$tested´.

Use Case 2

Control debug printing by means of an automatic toggle like this one:

static $count = 0;
$this->debug_on = !$count++;
//...
$this->debug_print( $stuff );

Same considerations as above.