Testing Winter Boot Applications with #[WinterBootTest]

Mark test classes as beans with #[WinterBootTest] and run the framework’s zero-dependency test harness to exercise services against a real application context.

Winter Boot ships a #[WinterBootTest] stereotype that registers a class as a first-class bean during startup, plus a small zero-dependency test runner (srcTests/run.php) that the framework itself uses. Together they let you write integration tests that exercise your services against a real DI container without pulling in PHPUnit.

The #[WinterBootTest] attribute

Apply #[WinterBootTest] to any class. The container treats it the same way it treats #[Service] or #[Component]: it registers the class as a bean, resolves its dependencies via #[Autowired], and runs its #[PostConstruct] hooks.

srcTests/UserServiceTest.php

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);

namespace com\example\test;

use dev\winterframework\stereotype\Autowired;
use dev\winterframework\stereotype\test\WinterBootTest;

#[WinterBootTest]
class UserServiceTest
{
    #[Autowired]
    private UserService $users;

    public function testCreateUser(): void
    {
        $id = $this->users->create('alice', '[e-mail]');
        // assert on $id
    }
}

The attribute lives at dev\winterframework\stereotype\test\WinterBootTest.

The bundled test runner

Winter Boot’s own tests use a plain PHP runner with no external dependencies. You can lift the same pattern into your project.

Run

From the repository root:

php srcTests/run.php

The exit code is 0 when all tests pass and 1 otherwise.

Layout

• run.php discovers *Test.php files in the directory and runs every public test* method, printing ok or FAIL per test plus a pass/fail summary.
• Support/TestCase.php is a base class with assertSame, assertTrue, assertFalse, assertNull, and assertThrows. Assertion failures throw AssertionFailed.
• Support/StubPropertySource.php is an in-memory PropertySource for tests. Choose the dataset via the dataset key of the propertySources entry in the fixture yml, and register rows in StubPropertySource::$datasets before building the context.
• fixtures/<name>/application.yml is a config directory you pass to new WinterPropertyContext(['.../fixtures/<name>']).

Add a test

1. Create the test file

   Create SomethingTest.php in srcTests/, namespace winterBootTests, class SomethingTest extends \winterBootTests\Support\TestCase.

2. Add public test methods

   Add public methods starting with test. No registration is needed; run.php picks the file up automatically.

Related pages

• Dependency injection explains how the container resolves #[Autowired] dependencies in test beans.
• Application lifecycle covers container boot order that also applies to test contexts.