Testing

PHP Testing

Chamilo uses PHPUnit for backend testing.

Test Database Setup

Tests require a dedicated database. Create .env.test.local with your test database credentials:

DATABASE_HOST='127.0.0.1'
DATABASE_PORT='3306'
DATABASE_NAME='chamilo_test'
DATABASE_USER='root'
DATABASE_PASSWORD='root'

Then initialise the test database:

php bin/console --env=test cache:clear
php bin/console --env=test doctrine:database:create
php bin/console --env=test doctrine:schema:create
php bin/console --env=test doctrine:fixtures:load --no-interaction

To reset after schema changes:

php bin/console --env=test doctrine:schema:update --force --complete

Running Tests

# Run all tests
php bin/phpunit

# Run a specific test file
php bin/phpunit tests/CoreBundle/Repository/UserRepositoryTest.php

# Run tests with HTML coverage report
php bin/phpunit --coverage-html var/coverage

Test Location

Tests are in the tests/ directory:

tests/
├── CoreBundle/
│   ├── Api/
│   ├── Command/
│   ├── Controller/
│   ├── Migrations/
│   ├── Repository/
│   ├── Security/
│   ├── Serializer/
│   ├── Settings/
│   ├── Tool/
│   └── Twig/
├── CourseBundle/
│   ├── Repository/
│   └── Settings/
├── behat/               # Behat end-to-end tests
├── fixtures/            # Alice fixture files
├── AbstractApiTest.php  # Base class for API tests
└── ChamiloTestTrait.php # Shared test helpers

Test Types

• Unit/Integration tests — PHPUnit tests in CoreBundle/ and CourseBundle/; most hit a real database (via dama/doctrine-test-bundle)

• Functional (API) tests — Extend AbstractApiTest and test HTTP endpoints end-to-end

• Behat tests — Browser-level acceptance tests in tests/behat/features/ (see below)

Behat (End-to-End) Tests

Chamilo has a Behat test suite for browser-level acceptance testing. It requires a running Chamilo instance, Chrome, and ChromeDriver.

# From the tests/behat/ directory:
../../vendor/behat/behat/bin/behat features/actionInstall.feature
../../vendor/behat/behat/bin/behat features/createUser.feature
../../vendor/behat/behat/bin/behat features/createCourse.feature

# Or run all features:
../../vendor/behat/behat/bin/behat

Configure the base URL in tests/behat/behat.yml before running.

Frontend Checks

# Lint JavaScript/Vue (ESLint with Prettier)
yarn eslint assets/vue/

# Type-check TypeScript
yarn tsc --noEmit

# Build production assets (verifies the entire build compiles)
yarn build

PHP Code Quality

Chamilo uses ECS (Easy Coding Standard), PHPStan, and Psalm for code quality. Composer shortcuts are available for each:

# Check code style (ECS — Easy Coding Standard)
composer phpcs
# or directly:
vendor/bin/ecs check

# Auto-fix code style violations
composer phpcs-fix
# or directly:
vendor/bin/ecs check --fix

# Static analysis with PHPStan (level 5, scans src/ and tests/)
composer phpstan
# or directly:
vendor/bin/phpstan analyse

# Static analysis with Psalm
composer psalm
# or directly:
vendor/bin/psalm --show-info=false

Note: there is no php-cs-fixer in this project. ECS (symplify/easy-coding-standard) is the code style tool.

Continuous Integration

Pull requests are automatically checked by four GitHub Actions workflows:

Workflow	What it runs
phpunit.yml	PHPUnit test suite
format_code.yml	ECS code style check
php_analysis.yml	Psalm, Doctrine schema validation, security checker
behat.yml	Behat end-to-end tests