continues integration server for php

1 http://surenrodrigo.blogspot.com

Continues Integration Server for PHP

In this article we’ll take a close look at how to setup a complete enterprise application development

environment for PHP. In my previous posts, I have justified the use of PHP in enterprise level application

development and also given details about advantage of using proper set of tools for enterprise level

application development.

Below diagram shows a typical development environment for an enterprise application. The diagram is

only for reference purposes and not to show you how a real enterprise application development

environment looks like, these environments can be very complex with multiple teams over different

countries working on the same application connected via a VPN. As I said before, the diagram is just for

reference and more importantly shows how normally a version control server and a continues

integration server will exists in an enterprise application development environment.

Source Code Repository

(SVN) Server

Continues Integration Server

Developer

workstation

Developer

workstation

Developer

workstation

Developer

workstationDeveloper

workstation

In a typical PHP enterprise application development environment, both the version control server and

the continues integration server will run on some flavor of Linux, however, for demonstration purposes

and to negate the common belief that windows cannot be used for PHP/MySQL development (I know

it’s a lame excuse ) I’ve decided to setup the complete environment on my Windows XP desktop.


You’ll be surprise how well this works on windows. I’ve installed the same system in Windows 7 and it’s

also working perfectly. What’s even more surprising is that the setup process for this platform is almost

exactly the same for both Linux and Windows platforms.

One of the greatest things about PHP/MySQL based development is the availability of so many excellent

Free and Open Source tools that enable the developer to develop application based on their chosen

platform. All the tools I’m using below are running under Windows XP/Windows 7.

1. XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html)

XAMPP is one of the best (definitely the best in my opinion) integrated WAMPP (Windows,

Apache, MySQL, PHP, PERL) distribution that is free and contains all the tools that you need to

develop applications in PHP. Download and install xampp.

2. Hudson (http://hudson-ci.org/)

The Continues Integration tool of our choice, this works really great with PHP and is completely

written in Java. Hence, we’ll need JDK 5.x for Hudson to work. Complete guideline to install

Hudson on windows platform is given here (http://wiki.hudson-

ci.org/display/HUDSON/Installing+Hudson+as+a+Windows+service).

1. Download and Install the latest version of JDK.

2. Download and install the latest version of XAMPP from

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html . By default the installation wizard will install

XAMPP on “C:\XAMPP” folder, for this article I’ll presume XAMPP is installed on “X:\XAMPP”

folder, where “X:\” is the drive of your preference.

3. Add “X:\xampp\php” to your “PATH” environment variable.

http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/environment.htm will provide you more details on this

and it shouldn’t be a problem for you to set it up.

4. Download Hudson from

5. Run Hudson for the first time by entering the command at the command prompt

java -jar hudson.war

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

http://hudson-ci.org/

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/environment.htm


6. Once the server starts, type http://localhost:8080 on a browser and you will see the Hudson,

home page. Now, follow the instructions given in http://wiki.hudson-

ci.org/display/HUDSON/Installing+Hudson+as+a+Windows+service to install Hudson as a service

in your environment, this will allow you to start Hudson when the computer is started.

7. At this point you should have a working Hudson installation on your computer. Now, we need to

install “Phing”, “Phing” is a build tool based on Apache Ant. Phing will ensure that your web

application is created in a structured way from your source code. In a compiled language such as

Java (only complied to byte codes) or C++ build tools such as Mavan or Make is responsible for

compiling and building the application from the source, but, in none compiled languages such as

PHP, build tools main responsibility is to ensure that the application is properly assembled and

all the pre installation (ex: copying necessary configuration files to specific locations) and post

installation tasks(ex: running unit and integration tests, setting up file permissions etc…) tasks

are done in a organized and a repetitive manner. In large applications, this is an essential tool to

have and will assure an error free deployment of the final application.

To install Phing (http://phing.info/trac/) we are using PEAR tool that comes bundled with

XAMPP distribution. In order to install Phing using Pear, issue the following commands on the

command prompt (CMD)

pear channel-discover pear.phing.info

pear install phing/phing

Below is the CMD output of the above commands,

http://localhost:8080/

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Installing+Hudson+as+a+Windows+service

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Installing+Hudson+as+a+Windows+service

http://phing.info/trac/


Your output may vary depending on your Pear version and Phing version, however, the basic

structure should be the same and the last line “install ok: channel://….” Should appear if

everything goes well.

8. Next, we’ll install PHPDocumentor, for those who are coming from Java background;

PHPDocumentor is exactly same as JDocs. PHPDocumentor will generate documentation from

your source code. It’s an invaluable tool in large scale application development which allows us

to document the APIs or Frameworks we may create in our application so other developers can

refer the documentation and exactly knows what our source code dose.

To install PHPDocumentor we are using Pear again. Issue the following command on the CMD

pear install PhpDocumentor

CMD output given below.


9. PHP CPD (PHP Copy and Paste Detector - http://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpcpd) is a

valuable tool that shows us duplicated code within our source repository. This helps us to take

design decision which may lead to refactoring certain functions to element code duplication

which will lead to an error free source code and will improve maintainability.

Issue the following command in CMD to install PHP CPD.

pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de

pear install phpunit/phpcpd

CMD output is given below.

10. Now, let’s install one of the most important tools, PHPUnit (http://www.phpunit.de/). PHPUnit

is the equaling of JUnit in the PHP World. It’s comprehensive Unit test framework which allows

us to test our code and is absolutely necessary if you are planning to do any kind of enterprise

application development.

To install PHPUnit, issue the following commands in your CMD

pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de

pear install phpunit/PHPUnit



11. We need to now install XDebug. The following command should install xdebug into your system.

pecl install xdebug

However, sometimes this method doesn’t work. In that case please visit http://xdebug.org/find-binary.php and follow the instructions given. This is a sure way of installing xdebug into your system. XDebug is an invaluable tool and you must configure this properly if you are serious about doing any kind of enterprise level application development in PHP.

12. PHP Depend (http://www.pdepend.org/documentation/getting-started.html) and PHP Code

Sniffer (http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer) are two important tools that can be

used heavily to improve the code quality. Writing maintainable and quality code is absolutely a

must in an environment where multiple teams are working on the same application. These tools

will allow smooth way of ensuring that everybody is following a defined coding standard.

To install PHPDepend issue the following commands for the CMD

pear channel-discover pear.pdepend.org

pear install pdepend/PHP_Depend-beta


http://xdebug.org/find-binary.php

http://xdebug.org/find-binary.php

http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer


To install PHP_Codesniffer, issue the following commands on the CMD

pear install PHP_CodeSniffer-1.2.0

CMD output is given below

OK, now we have all the tools necessary installed in our CI server. Now, it’s time to install our SVN

server. Chances are that you are already using a SVN server for your development. If you are not, I’m

providing you details about installing and configuring a SVN server in a windows environment.

13. I’m using Visual SVN server which allows you to setup a windows based SVN server environment

quickly and easily. Please read the license agreement and install the software product

accordingly. I have also setup TortoiseSVN as my svn client to connect to the svn server. Setting

up Visual SVN Server and TortoiseSVN is pretty straight forward hence; I’ll not go into details

here.

14. Create a new Repository using Visual SVN management panel. And checkout/commit the project

code you wish to manage using the CI environment.


15. We’ll now install the necessary Hudson plug-in to work with our installed tools. Load Hudson in

a browser and navigate to “Hudson » Plug-in Manager”. Selected “Available” tab and select

(check) the following plug-in

a. Checkstyle b. Clover c. DRY d. Green Balls (handy because it shows successful builds as green circles rather than blue) e. JDepend f. xUnit (will handle the output of PHPUnit test results XML)

Now press the install button in the bottom of the page. Installation will take some time

depending on your internet connection. Once ever y thing is installed successfully you should

see a similar screen as below

Now click on the “Restart when no jobs are running” button on the top left hand side to restart

Hudson.

Now we have successfully setup the environment necessary to using Hudson as a productive CI server in

our build server. The following section will explain how to setup a build script using Phing and how to

setup a Hudson job to use the build script and do continues integration of our project.

http://localhost:8080/

http://localhost:8080/pluginManager/

16. Now we’ll setup the build script for our project. By now it’s assumed you have setup a SVN

server account for your project and your project files are ready to be committed for the SVN

server. The following Phing build script can be used with any of the PHP projects you wish to

manage with a CI server. I’m assuming that our project is called “TestDrivenDevelopment”

Please change the name according to your project name.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<project name="TestDrivenDevelopment" basedir="." default="app">

<property name="builddir" value="${ws}/build" />

<target name="clean">

<echo msg="Clean..." />

<delete dir="${builddir}" />

</target>

<target name="prepare">

<echo msg="Prepare..." />

<mkdir dir="${builddir}" />

<mkdir dir="${builddir}\logs" />

<mkdir dir="${builddir}\logs\coverage" />

<mkdir dir="${builddir}\docs" />

<mkdir dir="${builddir}\app" />

</target>



<target name="app">

<echo msg="We do nothing yet!" />

</target>



<target name="phpdoc">

<echo msg="PHP Documentor..." />

<phpdoc title="API Documentation"

destdir="${builddir}\docs"

sourcecode="yes"

defaultpackagename="MHTest"

output="HTML:Smarty:PHP">

<fileset dir="source">

<include name="**/*.php" />

</fileset>

</phpdoc>

</target>

<target name="phpcpd">

<echo msg="PHP Copy/Paste..." />

<exec command="phpcpd --log-pmd=${builddir}\logs\pmd.xml source" escape="false" />

</target>



<target name="pdepend">

<echo msg="PHP Depend..." />

<exec command="pdepend --jdepend-xml=${builddir}\logs\jdepend.xml ${ws}\source"

escape="false" />

</target>



<target name="phpcs">

<echo msg="PHP CodeSniffer..." />

<exec command="phpcs --standard=ZEND --report=checkstyle ${ws}\source >

${builddir}\logs\checkstyle.xml" escape="false" />

</target>



<target name="phpunit">

<echo msg="PHP Unit..." />

<exec command="phpunit --log-junit ${builddir}\logs\phpunit.xml --coverage-clover

${builddir}\logs\coverage\clover.xml --coverage-html ${builddir}\logs\coverage\

${ws}\source\tests"/>

</target>

</project>

Please make sure the build script is placed in the root folder of the project always.

17. Now, we’ll setup a Hudson Job for our project. In the Hudson home page click “New Job” fill in

the project details as shown in the below screenshot.


This creates a new Hudson job, and you will be taken into the configuration screen.

Below points covers configuring the Hudson job for our project. For each project you wish to manage

with Hudson you need to create different jobs.

18. In the “Source Code Management” section select “Subversion” and click on the “?” adjacent to

the “Repository URL” text box. This should display a help description as shown below in the

screenshot. Click on the “this link” to load the Subversion configuration screen.

19. In the Subversion configuration screen enter the URL of the SVN repository you have created for

the project. Also, you need to enter the Username and Password and select the protocol (HTTPS

or HTTP) you are using to connect to the repository and press “OK”. Please see the below screen

shot.


You will be taken back to the configuration screen explained in the above point (point 18). You

need to Enter and select the following here.

a. Repository URL: (URL you just configured) b. Local module directory: source c. Check “Use update” which speeds up checkout

20. Under “Builder Triggers” section, select “Poll SCM” and enter the following.

5 * * * *

10 * * * *

15 * * * *

20 * * * *

25 * * * *

30 * * * *

35 * * * *

40 * * * *

45 * * * *

50 * * * *

55 * * * *

This ensures that Hudson will check the SVN repository every 5 minutes for changes and if there are changes it will trigger a build automatically.

21. Under “Build” Section click “Add build step” button and select “Execute Windows batch command”. In the “Command” text box enter the following. phing -f %WORKSPACE%\source\build.xml prepare app phpdoc phpcpd pdepend phpcs phpunit -Dws=%WORKSPACE%

This is our Phing build command.


22. The Configuration of the “Post Build Action” section is very important. Please configure the

section so it looks like as shown in the below screen shots

Press the “Save” button after you ensure that you have entered all the directory path values and other

configurations exactly as shown above.


We are actually configuration the Hudson modules we have installed in a previous step to work with this

project. For every new Hudson job you create you can use the same configuration values for this section

(as long as you use the same build.xml script I have listed above).

Configuration is now complete. You will be taken to the new Job screen. Press “Build now” from your

left hand side navigation links to trigger a new build (make sure you have the project source code

committed to the repository and your build.xml is located in the root folder of the project), you will see

the building happening visually within the “Build History” section. If everything goes well you’ll have a

successful build with a green ball appearing near your build number.

A Green ball represents a successful build and a Red ball indicates a build failure. If for some reason your

build fails, click on the build within the “Build History” section. This will take you the build description

screen as shown below,

Click on the “Console Output” to see the complete console output of the build. This will provide you

with all the information that is required to fix the build failure.

It will take few successful builds for Hudson to generate all the necessary reports. Once you have

completed few builds it will be obvious how valuable Hudson will be. A matured Hudson job screen is

shown below.


Well, that’s it. Now you have an invaluable tool at your disposal to manage your builds, track the quality

of your code and test cases. Not only that it will also document your PHP Code using PHPDocumenter

and you can manage all of this within easy to use user interface of Hudson.

Hope this information has helped you to see how PHP can be used successfully to develop Enterprise

level applications.

continues integration server for php

Documents