Why Can't PHPUnit UnitTest My Wordpress Website

Question

I have been researching this issue for days and although many people ask this question I never found a clear and concise answer.

I am running:

PHP Unit: Version 3.7.21
WordPress: Version 3.5.1
OS: Ubuntu 11.10
MySQL: Version 5.1.69-0ubuntu0.11.10.1
PHP: Version 5.3.6-13ubuntu3.10

Long story short, I have the basic wordPress core downloaded into a directory on my computer. I have successfully downloaded and installed pear and phpunit. I tested phpunit by writing basic tests on simple php files which worked fine. My issue is when I run phpunit on a wordpress site (which I have not changed the core WP files of).

I get the error:

"PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function main() on a non-member object in /< root_directory>/functions.php on line 779".

This error corresponds to this code-segment:

function wp( $query_vars = '' ) {
    global $wp, $wp_query, $wp_the_query;
    $wp->main( $query_vars ); // Line 779

    if ( !isset($wp_the_query) )
        $wp_the_query = $wp_query;
}

After some intense internet crawling I found many people had errors on this exact line so I know there is some general thing like an environment setting or our setup process that gave us all this error.

Some solutions I have read and tried that did not work for me:

Change the required file in your "index.php" file.
Place a require of "load.php" above the head in your "index.php" file.
Re-install WordPress
Change boot-strap and phpunit environments.

I have been a web-developer for 5 years but I have never used WordPress for one of my clients before. Once I can get this set up writing the unit tests will be easy; but I have no idea what is causing this issue. Any links to guides/tutorials or clear explanations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:56:02Z

1

There is a WordPress test suite, which your question suggests you might have missed:

http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/automated-testing/

Keep in mind, with that being highlighted, that WP was not designed in such a way that it or anything related to it can or is supposed to be tested. The modus operandi has, for years, been to commit code with no tests at all. It's admittedly improving over the years, albeit at a slow pace.

Related questions:

What are the best practices of custom application Wordpress development?

WordPress Plugin: How do I avoid "tight coupling"?

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:56

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Jun 15, 2013 at 11:35

Denis de Bernardy

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Thanks Dennis, I tried that guide earlier but it didn't work for me. But knowing that this method should work after further research I found this link gist.github.com/xentek/3482677 . And between those two links I figured everything out. Also just a quick question, why is WP designed that way, and would we be better off just fixing bugs if and when they occur instead of going through the tedious work for designing unit-tests for our WordPress site?
– Devon Bernard
Commented Jun 17, 2013 at 16:30
To put things bluntly, WP was created by college kids who forked a piece of software created by other college kids. And contrary to e.g. Drupal (which is making the switch to Symfony2 components in Drupal8), it attracted few developers who were accustomed to enterprise software. It's improving as the years pass by; just not as fast as some wished they did -- mainly because there's mountains of legacy hacks, plugins, themes and sites that they don't wish to break.
– Denis de Bernardy
Commented Jun 17, 2013 at 17:15

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