Overview

Code coverage is a great valuable tool to find identify gaps in your code coverage and making sure test suite and ensure that your code is adequately covered with by tests. High However, high code coverage alone does not guarantee great test quality so please make sure the tests are well written. At the end this will likely be more important than high-quality tests. It is critical to focus on writing well-constructed tests, as this will have a greater impact than striving to cover every line of code.

PHPUnit and code coverage

Traditionally PHPUnit comes with PHPUnit provides built-in support for generating code coverage reports in different formats.

Over time PHPUnit changed how it is being configured and run. As different Totara versions also come with different PHPUnit versions this document outlines the approach to set up your environment and generate coverage for multiple versions.

various formats. To generate code coverage, PHPUnit relies on either XDdebug XDebug or pcov. The performance of While pcov is superior to XDebug but we will show how you can run it with more performant than XDebug, this guide demonstrates how to use both.

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Configuring and

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generating code coverage reports

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Initialise PHPUnit

The first step is to initialise the PHPUnit environment.

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(latest version)

Step 1: Initialise PHPUnit

php test/phpunit/phpunit.php init

Totara 12

php admin/tool/phpunit/cli/init.php

Whitelists

In order to generate code coverage you need to provide a whitelist in the phpunit.xml file otherwise you get an error when trying to generate the report.

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Step 2: Configure whitelists

To generate code coverage, you need to define a whitelist in your phpunit.xml file. Without this, you will encounter the following error:

Error: Incorrect whitelist config, no code coverage will be generated.

Add the following whitelist configuration to the your phpunit.xml file directly after the closing </php> tag.

Totara 14 and higher

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. Adjust the paths to match your project’s structure. Only directories and files included in the whitelist will appear in the coverage report.

File: test/phpunit/phpunit.xml

</php>
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<source>
    <include>
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/totara/htmlsrc/SITENAME/server/totara/core/classes/local</directory>
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/totara/src/htmlSITENAME/server/totara/core/classes/task</directory>
        <file>/var/www/htmltotara/src/SITENAME/server/totara/core/classes/visibility_adviser.php</file>
    </include>
</coverage>

Totara 13

<filter>
    <whitelist>
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/html/server/totara/core/classes/local</directory>
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/html/server/totara/core/classes/task</directory>
        <file>/var/www/html/server/totara/core/classes/visibility_adviser.php</file>
    </whitelist>
</filter>

Totara 12

Same as for Totara 13 except that you have to add the processUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="false" addUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="false" attributes.

<filter>
    <whitelist processUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="false" addUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="false">source>

Important notes

• Use full paths to avoid incorrect whitelist configuration errors.

• You can also use <exclude> tags. Please refer to the PHPUnit documentation for the full configuration details.

• Limit the whitelist to relevant files and directories to reduce the report generation time.

• If <source> does not work, replace it with <coverage>.

Step 3: Generate coverage reports

Using XDebug

Ensure XDebug is installed. Use the following commands to generate an HTML-formatted coverage report:

XDEBUG_MODE=coverage php test/phpunit/phpunit.php run --filter=totara_core --coverage-html /var/www/html/coverage_report

Clover XML Report

XDEBUG_MODE=coverage php test/phpunit/phpunit.php run --filter=totara_core --coverage-clover /tmp/coverage_report.xml

Using pcov

pcov is a high-performance alternative to XDebug. To set it up:

1. Install pcov and note the generated path to pcov.so, e.g. /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20230831/pcov.so:

   Code Block
   pecl install pcov

2. Update php.ini. Note here also that we update the memory_limit to 8G:

   Code Block
   language ini
   memory_limit=8G [pcov] extension="path/to/pcov.so" pcov.enabled=1 pcov.exclude='~(vendor|tests|node_modules|.git|client|.scannerwork)~' pcov.initial.memory=1073741824 pcov.initial.files=30000

php --ini

3. Generate the report:

   Code Block
   phpunit --coverage-html /var/www/html/coverage_report /path/to/plugin/to/test

Viewing the reportusing Totara docker developer environment

If using our Totara Docker Development environment - /wiki/spaces/IN/pages/108151852 - you can replace the output path for the coverage report /var/www/html/coverage_report with /var/www/totara/src/coverage_report. Once you’ve done this, execute the following steps to make it accessible:

1. On your PHP container: Once the coverage report has been created, set the permissions to allow nginx to access the generated files by running the following:

chmod o+rx -R /var/www/totara/src/coverage_report

You will need to run the above each time you generate a new coverage report.

2. On your local machine: add your new “coverage_report site” in the hosts file, so that we can access it via the browser. Replace XX with the PHP version you are currently using. For example if you’re using PHP 8.3, this will be 83. Once this step has been run, you should not need to repeat this step.

sudo -- sh -c "echo \"127.0.0.1 coverage_report.totaraXX\" >> /etc/hosts"

3. Now you should be able to access your coverage report via the web browser by navigating to http://coverage_report.totaraXX, where XX is the PHP version you used in step 2.

Configurations for older versions

Totara 13

Initialisation:

php test/phpunit/phpunit.php init

Whitelist configuration:

<filter>
    <whitelist>
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/htmltotara/src/SITENAME/server/totara/core/classes/local</directory>
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/html/totara/src/SITENAME/server/totara/core/classes/task</directory>
        <file>/var/www/htmltotara/src/SITENAME/server/totara/core/classes/visibility_adviser.php</file>
    </whitelist>
</filter>

This is just an example. Please change the whitelist so it matches your needs. Only directories and files included in the whitelist will be showing up in the report.

You can also use <exclude> tags. Please refer to the PHPUnit documentation for the full configuration details.

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Generating coverage

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XDebug

Please make sure you have xdebug installed.

To generate the coverage report use the following command to generate a HTML formatted report.

Totara 13 and above

reports:

XDEBUG_MODE=coverage php test/phpunit/phpunit.php run --filter=totara_core --coverage-html /var/www/totara/src/dev/coverage

Totara 12

Initialisation:

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XDEBUG_MODE=coverage vendor/bin/phpunit --filter=totara_core --coverage-html /var/www/html/coverage_report

Please note that this only runs the test for a particular area of the code to reduce the runtime. This should match what you have configured as a whitelist.

You can also generate a Clover XML report to be used in other tools:

Totara 13 and above

XDEBUG_MODE=coverage php test/phpunit/phpunit.php run --filter=totara_core --coverage-clover /tmp/coverage_report.xml

php admin/tool/phpunit/cli/init.php

Whitelist configuration:

<filter>
    <whitelist processUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="false" addUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="false">
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/totara/src/SITENAME/totara/core/classes/local</directory>
        <directory suffix=".php">/var/www/totara/src/SITENAME/totara/core/classes/task</directory>
        <file>/var/www/totara/src/SITENAME/totara/core/classes/visibility_adviser.php</file>
    </whitelist>
</filter>

Generating coverage reports:

XDEBUG_MODE=coverage vendor/bin/phpunit --filter=totara_core --coverage-cloverhtml /tmpvar/www/html/coverage_report.xml

Please refer to the PHPUnit documentation for the available formats.

pcov

pcov is an alternative to XDebug. It is much more performant.

To get it running:

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Install the pcov extension with

pecl install pcov

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pcov installation:

Install pcov/clobber which adds pcov support to PHPUnit 7:

composer require pcov/clobber
vendor/bin/pcov clobber

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Enable and configure the extension in the php.ini

[pcov]
extension=pcov.so
pcov.enabled=1
pcov.exclude='~(vendor|tests|node_modules|.git|client|.scannerwork)~'
pcov.initial.memory=1073741824
pcov.initial.files=30000

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Ensure PHP has enough memory in php.ini. Give it heaps, as code coverage is memory intensive.

memory_limit=8G

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Generate the code coverage

Totara 13 and above

cd /path/to/code
XDEBUG_MODE=off php -dpconv.directory=`pwd` test/phpunit/phpunit.php run --filter=totara_core --coverage-html /var/www/html/coverage_report

Totara 12

cd /path/to/code
XDEBUG_MODE=off php -d pcov.directory=`pwd` vendor/bin/phpunit --filter=totara_core --coverage-html /var/www/html/coverage_report

This will create a nicely formatted report for you to inspect.

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[pcov]
extension=pcov.so
pcov.enabled=1
pcov.exclude='~(vendor|tests|node_modules|.git|client|.scannerwork)~'
pcov.initial.memory=1073741824
pcov.initial.files=30000

Generate the code coverage

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Integration with PHPStorm

PHPStorm has the ability to run code coverage analysis in product using XDebug or pcov. The analysis is automatically loaded into the platform and displayed both in the coverage tool, and in-editor when looking at files. Their documentation on code coverage explains how to set it up.

Here are a few pointers and tips:

• You still need to define a whitelist

• As a product we support several different versions of PHP - if you're using php-fpm and have them installed you can configure PHPStorm so that you can choose which version you run tests and coverage on

• When looking at a testcase file you can click on the little arrows next to test case classes and test case methods and choose to run specific tests

Common pitfalls

1. Incorrect phpunit.xml paths: Ensure paths point to the correct Totara installation.

2. Whitelist misconfiguration: Use pwd to verify paths and ensure full paths in your configuration.

Further reading

• Unit testing in Totara

• External: XDebug code coverage analysis

• External: PHPDBG documentation

• External: pcov repository and documentation