How do you currently test code?

The most obvious means of testing PHP code is to save it to a file and browse to it in your web browser. If the output of the script seems correct then your test has been successful. A variation on this theme when testing functions or classes which don't have direct output is to insert var_dump() and echo statements to reveal the content of variables. Another variation is interacting with a completed application to check things work as expected.

These methods of testing are extremely easy but they bely a serious problem. You cannot easily repeat these same tests without a lot of effort. It's in avoiding this effort, and making tests or examples repeatable that makes PHPSpec a valuable tool. I'm not going to exclude SimpleTest, PHPUnit or PHPT from that either - familiarity with more than one framework in PHP is always advisable.

Using a framework like PHPSpec allows you to write examples which are repeatable. These automatic tests can be executed time and time again using a quick command line call or browser refresh. Repeatable testing however is not where it all ends.