Introduction to PHPUnit Integration Testing and Twilio

So in keeping with the idea of exposing developers to topics they may not know about, to give them a reference point to start from when they encounter problems that could be solved with various technology.

First, I gave a presentation on how to get started with PHPUnit and Selenium to build your first integration test.

One thing I didn't pont out during the talk, was I chose PHPUnit simply because there are less moving parts. It's very easy for anyone to see the connections between writing a PHPUnit Selenium test and what is actually happening, whereas configuring Behat with Gherkin adds more abstraction and more steps to get to your first successful test.

Remember, the most important part of testing is to have tests to run.  The technology that powers them is secondary and should not stand in the way of simply getting started. Once you are comfortable writing tests, then expand your practice to look at the benefits of a Behavior Driven Development approach with Behat. But first? Test.

Extra links on XPath

• XPath at Microsoft
• XPath at W3 Schools

And the slides:

I also spoke for a while on Twilio. This talk was much more unstructured, and while I do have a video recording of it, I would prefer to distribute it only to those present, upon request, as I don't feel it is anywhere near presentable for general consumption. That said, here are the slides, and a link to the GitHub repository for the demo, as well as the GitHub repository for my own custom wrapper over the Twilio SDK.