How to output in CLI during execution of PHP Unit tests

Question

When running a PHPUnit test  I would like to be able to dump output so I can debug one or two things   I have tried the following  similar to the PHPUnit Manual example    class theTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase                   outputBuffering disabled             public function testOutput             print r  Hello World            print  Ping           echo  Pong            out    Foo           var dump  out                With the following result   PHPUnit  package version  by Sebastian Bergmann      Time  0 seconds  Memory  3 00Mb  OK  1 test  0 assertions    Notice there is none of the expected output   I m using the HEAD versions of the git repos as of September 19th  2011   Output of php -version     php -version PHP 5 2 9  cli   built  Dec  8 2010 11 36 37   Copyright  c  1997-2009 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2 2 0  Copyright  c  1998-2009 Zend Technologies     with Xdebug v2 1 0  Copyright  c  2002-2010  by Derick Rethans   Is there anything I m doing wrong  or is this potentially a PHPUnit bug

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In laravel 5 you can use dump    Dump the content from the last response   class ExampleTest extends TestCase      public function test1                  this- gt post   user     name    gt   Gema              this- gt dump              gives

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It is possible to use Symfony Component Console Output TrimmedBufferOutput and then test the buffered output string like this  use Symfony Component Console Output TrimmedBufferOutput         public function testSomething         output   new TrimmedBufferOutput 999       output- gt writeln  Do something in your code with the output class                test the output      this- gt assertStringContainsString  expected string       output- gt fetch

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Hackish  but works  Throw an exception with the debug output as its message   class theTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase       public function testOutput             throw new  Exception  hello                 Yields       There was 1 error   1  theTest  testOutput Exception  hello

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I had to modify source code for this code to work so you need to add URL for this forked repos to composer for this will work  class TestCase extends  PHPUnit Framework TestCase                   Save last response         var Response null A Response instance             static  lastResponse                  Modify to save response                param  string  method         param  string  uri         param  array  parameters         param  array  files         param  array  server         param  string  content         param  bool  changeHistory         return  Illuminate Http Response             final public function call           method           uri           parameters                files                server                content   null           changeHistory   true                   response   parent  call  method   uri   parameters   files   server   content   changeHistory           static   lastResponse    this- gt client- gt getResponse            return  response                         Modify message to add response text                param mixed  value         param PHPUnit Framework Constraint  constraint         param string  message         since  Method available since Release 3 0 0             final public static function assertThat  value  PHPUnit Framework Constraint  constraint   message                      message    PHP EOL   static   lastResponse   PHP EOL          parent  assertThat  value   constraint   message

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This was taken from PHPUnit Docs about Fixtures   This should allow you to dump information at any point durring the phpunit test life cycle    Just replace   METHOD   in the code below with whatever you want to output  Example 4 2  Example showing all template methods available   lt  php class TemplateMethodsTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase       public static function setUpBeforeClass                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n               protected function setUp                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n               protected function assertPreConditions                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n               public function testOne                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n             this- gt assertTrue TRUE              public function testTwo                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n             this- gt assertTrue FALSE              protected function assertPostConditions                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n               protected function tearDown                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n               public static function tearDownAfterClass                 fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n               protected function onNotSuccessfulTest Exception  e                fwrite STDOUT    METHOD       n            throw  e            gt

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For some cases one could use something like that to output something to the console  class yourTests extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase          Add Warnings        protected function addWarning  msg  Exception  previous   null                 add warning    this- gt getTestResultObject             msg   new PHPUnit Framework Warning  msg  0   previous            add warning- gt addWarning  this   msg  time              this- gt setTestResultObject  add warning                 Add errors        protected function addError  msg  Exception  previous   null                 add error    this- gt getTestResultObject             msg   new PHPUnit Framework AssertionFailedError  msg  0   previous            add error- gt addError  this   msg  time              this- gt setTestResultObject  add error                 Add failures        protected function addFailure  msg  Exception  previous   null                 add failure    this- gt getTestResultObject             msg   new PHPUnit Framework AssertionFailedError  msg  0   previous            add failure- gt addFailure  this   msg  time              this- gt setTestResultObject  add failure              public function test messages                  this- gt addWarning  Your warning message              this- gt addError  Your error message              this- gt addFailure  Your Failure message                  Or just mark test states         public function test testMarking                  this- gt markTestIncomplete             this- gt markTestSkipped

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Update  See rdlowrey s update below regarding the use of fwrite STDERR  print r  myDebugVar  TRUE    as a much simpler work around    This behaviour is intentional  as jasonbar has pointed out   The conflicting state of the manual has been reported to PHPUnit   A work-around is to have PHPUnit assert the expected output is empty  when infact there is output  which will trigger the unexpected output to be shown   class theTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase                   outputBuffering disabled             public function testOutput              this- gt expectOutputString         tell PHPUnit to expect    as output         print r  Hello World            print  Ping           echo  Pong            out    Foo           var dump  out                gives   PHPUnit  package version  by Sebastian Bergmann   F  Time  1 second  Memory  3 50Mb  There was 1 failure   1  theTest  testOutput Failed asserting that two strings are equal  --- Expected     Actual       -     Hello WorldPingPongstring 4   Foo      FAILURES  Tests  1  Assertions  1  Failures  1    Be certain to disable any other assertions you have for the test as they may fail before the output assertion is tested  and hence you wont see the output

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PHPUnit is hiding the output with ob start    We can disable it temporarily       public function log  something   null                ob end clean            var dump  something           ob start

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Here are few methods useful for printing debug messages in PHPUnit 4 x    syslog LOG DEBUG   Debug  Message 1      More practical example   syslog LOG DEBUG  sprintf   s  Value   s     METHOD    var export   GET  TRUE       Calling syslog   will generate a system log message  see  man syslog conf    Note  Possible levels  LOG DEBUG  LOG INFO  LOG NOTICE  LOG WARNING  LOG ERR  etc   On macOS  to stream the syslog messages in realtime  run   log stream --level debug --predicate  processImagePath contains  php    fwrite STDERR   LOG  Message 2  n     Note  The STDERR constant is not available if reading the PHP script from stdin  Here is the workaround   Note  Instead of STDERR  you can also specify a filename  file put contents  php   stderr    LOG  Message 3  n   FILE APPEND    Note  Use this method  if you don t have STDERR constant defined  register shutdown function  file put contents    php   stderr    LOG  Message 4  n   FILE APPEND    Note  Use this method  if you d like to print something at the very end without affecting the tests    To dump the variable  use var export    e g   Value      var export  some var  TRUE      n    To print above messages only during verbose or debug mode  see  Is there a way to tell if --debug or --verbose was passed to PHPUnit in a test     Although if testing the output is part of the test it-self  check out  Testing Output docs page

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I m having some luck with VisualPHPUnit  and it does helpfully show output  among other things   class TestHello extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase        public function test Hello                  print  hello world

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If you use Laravel  then you can use logging functions such as info   to log to the Laravel log file under storage logs  So it won t appear in your terminal but in the log file

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I output my Testresults HTML based  in this case it was helpfull to flush the content   var dump  array   ob flush      There is a second PHP Method   flush      which i not has tried

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In short  phpunit supresses STDOUT  It writes to STDERR by default  unless you add --verbose or --debug   You can do one of those things   print your debug output to STDERR instead var dump your debug as usual but add --verbose to the phpunit command line var dump your debug as usual but add a line ob flush    beneath it use the correct commands in phpunit for testing exactly what you re trying to test here  Obviously  the last thing is the Good Thing to do  and the rest are quick temporary hacks

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Just use the --verbose flag when execute phpunit     phpunit --verbose -c phpunit xml    The advantage of this method is that you don t need to change the test code  you can print strings  var dump s o anything you wish always and it will be shown in the console only when verbose mode is set   I hope this helps

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Try using --debug  Useful if you re trying to get the right path to an include or source data file

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You should really think about your intentions  If you need the information now when debugging to fix the test  you will need it next week again when the tests break   This means that you will need the information always when the test fails - and adding a var dump to find the cause is just too much work  Rather put the data into your assertions   If your code is too complex for that  split it up until you reach a level where one assertion  with a custom message  tells you enough to know where it broke  why and how to fix the code

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You can use PHPunit default way of showing messages to debug your variables inside your test like this   this- gt assertTrue false  your variable

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UPDATE  Just realized another way to do this that works much better than the --verbose command line option   class TestSomething extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase       function testSomething              myDebugVar   array 1  2  3           fwrite STDERR  print r  myDebugVar  TRUE              This lets you dump anything to your console at any time without all the unwanted output that comes along with the --verbose CLI option     As other answers have noted  it s best to test output using the built-in methods like    this- gt expectOutputString  foo      However  sometimes it s helpful to be naughty and see one-off temporary debugging output from within your test cases  There is no need for the var dump hack workaround  though  This can easily be accomplished by setting the --verbose command line option when running your test suite  For example     phpunit --verbose -c phpunit xml   This will display output from inside your test methods when running in the CLI environment   See  Writing Tests for PHPUnit - Testing Output

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It s not a bug  but very much intentional  Your best bet is to write to a log file of some kind and tail the log to watch for output   If you are trying to TEST output  check this out   Also      Note  Please note that PHPUnit swallows all output that is emitted   during the execution of a test  In strict mode  a test that emits   output will fail

[php] How to output in CLI during execution of PHP Unit tests?

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