frameworks

A while back I spent some time evaluating unit test frameworks from front-end web testing. A key driver is the need to handle JavaScript forms.

Here are some thoughts on those test frameworks :

- PHPUnit : Good for back-end work, but weak with front-end (browser) work

- SimpleTest : Same as PHPUnit

- Watir : Very mature and popular browser test app, but requires knowledge of Ruby scripting language

- IeUnit : Not quite as popular as Watir, but mature IE test framework. Scriptable in JavaScript

Here are the slides to an interesting talk about PHP frameworks, given by the "first" creator of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf, who now works for Yahoo.

In PHP 3.0+, Rasmus kind of gave up control of PHP to a couple other guys who took it in much more of a Object-oriented way. I like the following slides where Rasmus questions how 10 years of OO haven't added much (except confusion) to the language :

http://talks.php.net/show/drupal08/4 PHP 1995 - short and simple
http://talks.php.net/show/drupal08/5 PHP 2005 - after 10 years of OO cruft added