In today’s competitive world, testing everything on your WordPress website is a must before making it live. Talking about plugins, they play a very significant role in your website expansion.
Choosing a plugin or build it from scratch and implementing in your store is definitely a good option, it is also important to ensure that it’s not broken or doesn’t contain any bugs. Whenever you code a WordPress plugin it holds a direct impact on the inter-linked features of your existing website.
Without proper testing of plugin, the chances are quite high that it turns out to be a nightmare for your complete website.
In today’s article, I will discuss the essentials of performing Unit Testing on your WordPress plugins for better performance and results.
Though there are multiple types of tests available to check your WordPress plugins still Unit Testing is the popular one. Every professional WordPress plugin developer for hire will always perform this testing technique.
These unit tests utilizing PHP Unit are generally inclined towards plugins, still there are many cases where developers use it for themes as well.
So, what is a ‘Unit Test’?
WordPress Unit Testing is a process of improving the quality of your software. Its sole aim is to reduce bugs while saving time and efforts.
In technical words, it is an additional set of code that tests different blocks of code and verifies its functions or modules. The process involves passing the input for different scripts and conditions to ensure a consistent and desired output.
Tip- Always write small and less complicated modules or functions in the main application to get the best of Unit Tests.
To perform a WordPress Unit Test, you need to posses a working knowledge of PHP, PHPUnit, and WordPress. But you always have an option to automate testing or hire expert wordpress developer do the job for you.
An automated testing or test automation is a special software that controls the test execution and compares the outcomes with the predicted or desired ones. It will cut down on your manual time involved in repetitive tasks and time involved in other manual testing.
Higher Reliability with Automated Unit Testing
With automation, you can easily detect bugs while developing the plugin. It allows you to easily track each and every test script that can be seen in the visual logs. Moreover, it yields accurate results with higher software quality.
What do you need to perform Unit Testing?
To perform a Unit Testing, you will require PHPUnit (to test PHP code) and WP-CLI (to integrate written test with WordPress setup).
Run the following commands to install PHPUnit,
Run the following to confirm installation
phpunit --version
Once confirmed, run the following commands to install WP-CLI,
Run the following to confirm installation
wp --info
Afterward, you can set up your Plugin Unit Test by changing terminal’s directory to root of WordPress installation, and running the appropriate plugin test files.
FINAL WORDS
There is no doubt that many of us fail to perform unit testing for our WordPress plugins because we don’t know much about them. And, some consider this testing as a waste of their time.
Though setting up a WordPress Unit Testing for Plugins can be time-consuming and complex sometimes still it is worth giving it a try. As depicted in this article, Unit Tests can help you to avoid bugs or other performance related issues.
Always practice writing Unit Test before implementing a WordPress plugin, so that you can get the effective and accurate outcomes.
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