You've been doing PHP development for a while but you find yourself constantly battling bugs, finding it hard to integrate bits of code together, and staying late to do deployments. You know there is a better way through test-driven development but you have no idea where to start.

You imagine yourself sitting down with an experienced developer -- just you and them, steadily working through problems and learning how to use test-driven development to design the API's and interfaces for your code while making sure nothing leaves development until you're 100% sure it's working.

In "Minimum Viable Tests" long-time PHP testing evangelist Chris Hartjes starts you off with the basics on the concepts surrounding test-driven development and shows you how a long-time grumpy programmer writes application with testing always in the front of his mind. Along the way you'll learn about:

• Chris' concept of "metatesting"
• The basics of what PHPUnit is and how it works
• The role of tests in the development process
• Effective use of test doubles
• Understanding how to mimic your application's environment via bootstrapping
• Writing wrappers around web API calls to make testing easier
• How fixtures and data providers help simplify your tests both today and tomorrow
• When you should use (and not abuse) monkey-patching tools
• The Arrange-Act-Assert test-writing strategy
• How to refactor existing tests

Chris has been watching and listening to people as they start their journey towards become test-driven developers. "Minimum Viable Tests" is designed to be your guide on the path to having well-tested, confidently-deployed PHP applications.

Long-time PHP testing advocate Chris Hartjes takes a look at one of the least-understood parts of testing computer software -- managing the expectations of people. In this book Chris draws on his experience of over a decade of helping developers build the skills needed to become good at testing and talks about how tests are written by people, not machines. His views on what to do when there are no tests but you want some, or what to do with a test suite nobody likes will challenge your thoughts on what testing is really about.

"Building Test-Driven Developers" covers:

• What is a "testing culture"
• Handling things when there are no tests
• Why testing should be "just part of the job"
• Dealing with tests nobody runs
• Does "Chicago vs. London" really matter?
• Dealing with difficult people

You need people skills to go along with all those great testing skills you've been building. Chris is here to help with those too!