How can I use XHProf to profile PHPUnit tests from the command line?

Question

I have some very slow PHPUnit tests (8 mins for 43 tests) and I need to use XHProf to find out what is going wrong.

How can I do this from the command line? I have PHPUnit in the project's /vendor directory, loaded via composer.

Answer 1

To find out which test are running slow, you can use

• https://github.com/johnkary/phpunit-speedtrap

Install the Listener via Composer and then enable it in your phpunit.xml, e.g.

<phpunit bootstrap="vendor/autoload.php">
...
    <listeners>
        <listener class="JohnKary\PHPUnit\Listener\SpeedTrapListener" />
    </listeners>
</phpunit>

To find out why tests are running slow, you can use

• https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit-testlistener-xhprof

You can configure it in phpunit.xml, e.g.

 <listeners>
  <listener class="PHPUnit_Util_Log_XHProf" file="PHPUnit/Util/Log/XHProf.php">
   <arguments>
    <array>
     <element key="xhprofLibFile">
      <string>/var/www/xhprof_lib/utils/xhprof_lib.php</string>
     </element>
     <element key="xhprofRunsFile">
      <string>/var/www/xhprof_lib/utils/xhprof_runs.php</string>
     </element>
     <element key="xhprofWeb">
      <string>http://localhost/xhprof_html/index.php</string>
     </element>
     <element key="appNamespace">
      <string>Doctrine2</string>
     </element>
     <element key="xhprofFlags">
      <string>XHPROF_FLAGS_CPU,XHPROF_FLAGS_MEMORY</string>
     </element>
     <element key="xhprofIgnore">
      <string>call_user_func,call_user_func_array</string>
     </element>
    </array>
   </arguments>
  </listener>
 </listeners>

Answer 2

Supplementing @Gordon's answer regarding xhprof.

There are two parts:

1. The PECL extension
2. The user-space viewer

The PECL extension adds methods to the PHP engine for metrics collection. You must install this extension.

The user-space viewer provides a web interface for understanding the output of the metrics collection. You don't need this, but you really want it. Unless you enjoy looking at raw metric data. To install and configure the user-space viewer so that PHPUnit can profile your tests:

(1) Add these packages to your composer.json:

composer require "facebook/xhprof:dev-master@dev" --dev
composer require "phpunit/test-listener-xhprof:1.0.*@dev" --dev

(2) Configure your web server to serve the vendor/facebook/xhprof/xhprof_html/ directory. Remember the URL.

(3) Adapt your existing PHPUnit configuration into a phpunit-xhprof.xml that's similar to this. Make sure you change the "appNamespace" to match your code and change "xhprofWeb" to the URL from step 2:

<phpunit>
  <testsuites>
    <testsuite name="All Tests">
      <directory suffix="Test.php">tests/</directory>
    </testsuite>
  </testsuites>
  <listeners>
    <listener class="PHPUnit\XHProfTestListener\XHProfTestListener" file="vendor/phpunit/test-listener-xhprof/src/XHProfTestListener.php">
     <arguments>
      <array>
       <element key="appNamespace">
        <string>App</string>
       </element>
       <element key="xhprofWeb">
        <string>http://localhost/vendor/facebook/xhprof/xhprof_html/index.php</string>
       </element>
       <element key="xhprofLibFile">
        <string>./vendor/facebook/xhprof/xhprof_lib/utils/xhprof_lib.php</string>
       </element>
       <element key="xhprofRunsFile">
        <string>./vendor/facebook/xhprof/xhprof_lib/utils/xhprof_runs.php</string>
       </element>
       <element key="xhprofFlags">
        <string>XHPROF_FLAGS_CPU,XHPROF_FLAGS_MEMORY</string>
       </element>
       <element key="xhprofIgnore">
        <string>call_user_func,call_user_func_array</string>
       </element>
      </array>
     </arguments>
    </listener>
   </listeners>
</phpunit>

(4) Run PHP and collect statistics: phpunit -c ./phpunit-xhprof.xml

You'll see output similar to the following:

 * BishopB\Pattern\Exception\InvalidArgumentTest::test_hierarchy
   http://localhost/vendor/facebook/xhprof/xhprof_html/index.php?run=556e05cec844c&source=BishopB\Pattern

That's the URL you configured to view the result of the run. If you want to view the raw metrics data, find that run key ("556e05cec844c", in this example) in your temporary directory:

$ ls -l /tmp/556e05cec844c.BishopB\\Pattern.xhprof
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bishop staff 16963 Jun  2 15:36 /tmp/556e05cec844c.BishopB\Pattern.xhprof