How to Detect if PHPUnit Tests are Running

PHPUnit is a Testing Framework written in PHP. It allows you to find glitches very early on and can save lots of time.

It's highly recommend to use it for automated testing for a medium to large projects. Manual testing is just not enough.

Why do you need to check if PHPUnit Tests are Running?

During tests your application's behavior can change a little bit when it runs in a testing environment.
For example it can call different API servers and not the live API servers, load different config files etc.

How to Detect if PHPUnit Tests are Running

<?php

/**
 * Orbisius_Article_7558::isInRunningTest();
 * @see https://orbisius.com/7558
 * @author Svetoslav Marinov | https://orbisius.com
 */
class Orbisius_Article_7558 {
    /**
     * Orbisius_Article_7558::isInRunningTest();
     * https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10253240/how-to-determine-if-phpunit-tests-are-running
     * @return bool
     */
    public static function isInRunningTest() {
        if (PHP_SAPI != 'cli') {
            return false;
        }

        if ( defined('PHPUNIT_COMPOSER_INSTALL') && defined('__PHPUNIT_PHAR__') ) {
            return true;
        }

        if (strpos($_SERVER['argv'][0], 'phpunit') !== false) {
            return true;
        }

        return false;
    }
}

The advantages of using PHPUnit for testing your PHP applications include:

• Finding bugs early: By testing the individual parts of your application, you can catch and fix bugs before they become bigger problems.
• Refactoring confidence: You can make changes to your code and be sure you haven't broken anything because the tests will show if something's wrong.
• Better design: Writing tests often leads to better, more modular code since you have to think about how to isolate each part for testing.
• Documentation: Tests serve as a form of documentation that shows how your code is supposed to work.