Laravel 4 testing; 'phpunit' is not recognized?

Install with composer

An easy way to get up and running with PHPUnit (without needing to install Pear and clutter up every system you want to use this on) is to include it in your composer.json file, like

"phpunit/phpunit": "4.0.*",

Then after doing a composer update you'll be able to run PHPUnit from command line like this:

vendor/bin/phpunit 

Since phpunit will be installed into the vendor/bin folder.

This will install PHPUnit to this project only, not your whole system. So when you want it gone, you simply remove the line from your composer.json file, run composer update, and poof, not a trace.

Installing for development environments only

If you only want to use this during development, add the composer line inside the "require-dev" section. That way it will only be installed when you opt to install dev dependancies via:

php composer.phar install --dev

or

php composer.phar update

If you are a window user and you are having this issue, do this:

You need to tell Window where to find PHPUnit command, you can first of all verify that this file exists in your Laravel project under /vendor/bin

Finally you need to append the full path to /vendor/bin in your window PATH variable,

To do this:1. Right-click on 'Computer' then click properties

2. On the second window click Advanced system settings

3. On the next window under Advanced click Environmental Variables

4. On the next window double-click PATH then set PATH variable by appending

the full path to your laravel-project/vendor/bin; Notice the ; at the end.

NB: Other variables might already exists in the PATH, so ensure you don't overwrite them by appending your own at the very end

5. Finally click Ok on all the dialog boxes

The easiest way to use phpunit is to put phpunit.phar in the root of your application and to run it with php phpunit.phar.