Testing the Word Class - PHP

Let's start by writing a test to count the number of syllables in a word:

<?php
require "PHPUnit/Framework/TestSuite.php"; 
require "PHPUnit/TextUI/TestRunner.php";
require "Text/Word.inc"; 
class Text_WordTestCase extends

PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase {
public $known_words = array( 'the' => 1,
'late' => 1,
'frantic' => 2,
'programmer' => 3);
public function _ _construct($name) {
parent::_ _construct($name);
} 
public function testKnownWords() {
foreach ($this->known_words as $word =>

$syllables) {
$obj = new Text_Word($word);
$this->assertEquals($syllables,

$obj->numSyllables()); 
} 
}
}
$suite = new

PHPUnit_Framework_TestSuite('Text_WordTestCase');
PHPUnit_TextUI_TestRunner::run($suite);
?>

Of course this test immediately fails because you don't even have a Word class, but you will take care of that shortly. The interface used for Word is just what seemed obvious. If it ends up being insufficient to count syllables, you can expand it.

The next step is to implement the class Word that will pass the test:

<?php
class Text_Word { 
public $word; 
public function _ _construct($name) { 
$this->word = $name; 
} 
protected function mungeWord($scratch) { 
// lower case for simplicity 
$scratch = strtolower($scratch);
return $scratch; 
} 
protected function numSyllables() { 
$scratch = mungeWord($this->word); 
// Split the word on the vowels. a e i o u,

and for us always y 
$fragments = preg_split("/[^aeiouy]+/",

$scratch);
// Clean up both ends of our array if they have

null elements 
if(!$fragments[0]) { 
array_shift($fragments); 
}        
if (!$fragments[count($fragments) - 1]) { 
array_pop($fragments); 
} 
return count($fragments); 
} 
}
?>

This set of rules breaks for late. When an English word ends in an e alone, it rarely counts as a syllable of its own (in contrast to, say, y, or ie). You can correct this by removing a trailing e if it exists. Here's the code for that:

function mungeWord($scratch) { 
$scratch = strtolower($scratch);
$scratch = preg_replace("/e$/", "", $scratch);
return $scratch; 
}

The test now breaks the, which has no vowels left when you drop the trailing e. You can handle this by ensuring that the test always returns at least one syllable. Here's how:

function numSyllables() { 
$scratch = mungeWord($this->word); 
// Split the word on the vowels. a e i o u, and

for us always y
$fragments = preg_split("/[^aeiouy]+/",

$scratch);
// Clean up both ends of our array if they have

null elements 
if(!$fragments[0]) { 
array_shift($fragments); 
}        
if (!$fragments[count($fragments) - 1]) { 
array_pop($fragments); 
} 
if(count($fragments)) { 
return count($fragments); 
} 
else { 
return 1; 
} 
}

When you expand the word list a bit, you see that you have some bugs still, especially with nondiphthong multivowel sounds (such as ie in alien and io in biography). You can easily add tests for these rules:

<?php
require_once "Text/Word.inc";
require_once "PHPUnit/Framework/TestSuite.php";
class Text_WordTestCase extends

PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase {
public $known_words = array( 'the' => 1,
'late' => '1',
'hello' => '2',
'frantic' => '2',
'programmer' => '3');
public $special_words = array ( 'absolutely' => 4,
'alien' => 3,
'ion' => 2,
'tortion' => 2,
'gracious' => 2,
'lien' => 1,
'syllable' => 3);
function _ _construct($name) {
parent::_ _construct($name);
}
public function testKnownWords() {
foreach ($this->known_words as

$word => $syllables) {
$obj = new Text_Word($word);
$this->assertEquals($syllables,

$obj->numSyllables(),
"$word has incorrect syllable count");
}
}
public function testSpecialWords() {
foreach ($this->special_words as

$word => $syllables) {
$obj = new Text_Word($word);
$this->assertEquals($syllables,

$obj->numSyllables(),
"$word has incorrect syllable count");
}
}
}
if(realpath($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) == _ _FILE_ _) {
require_once "PHPUnit/TextUI/TestRunner.php";
$suite = new

PHPUnit_Framework_TestSuite('Text_WordTestCase');
PHPUnit_TextUI_TestRunner::run($suite);
}
?>

This is what the test yields now:

PHPUnit 1.0.0-dev by Sebastian Bergmann.
..F
Time: 0.00660002231598
There was 1 failure:
1) TestCase text_wordtestcase->testspecialwords()

failed: absolutely has incorrect 
syllable count expected 4, actual 5
FAILURES!!!
Tests run: 2, Failures: 1, Errors: 0.

To fix this error, you start by adding an additional check to numSyllables() that adds a syllable for the io and ie sounds, adds a syllable for the two-syllable able, and deducts a syllable for the silent e in absolutely. Here's how you do this:

<?
function countSpecialSyllables($scratch) {
$additionalSyllables = array( '/\wlien/', // alien

but not lien
'/bl$/',  // syllable
'/io/',   // biography
);
$silentSyllables = array( '/\wely$/',

// absolutely but not ely
);
$mod = 0;
foreach( $silentSyllables as $pat ) {
if(preg_match($pat, $scratch)) {
$mod--;
}
}
foreach( $additionalSyllables as $pat ) {
if(preg_match($pat, $scratch)) {
$mod++;
}
}
return $mod;
}
function numSyllables() {
if($this->_numSyllables) {
return $this->_numSyllables;
}
$scratch = $this->mungeWord($this->word);
// Split the word on the vowels. a e i o u, and

for us always y
$fragments = preg_split("/[^aeiouy]+/", $scratch);
if(!$fragments[0]) {
array_shift($fragments);
}
if(!$fragments[count($fragments) - 1]) {
array_pop($fragments);
}
$this->_numSyllables +=

$this->countSpecialSyllables($scratch);
if(count($fragments)) {
$this->_numSyllables += count($fragments);
}
else {
$this->_numSyllables = 1;
}
return $this->_numSyllables;
}
?>

The test is close to finished now, but tortion and gracious are both two-syllable words. The check for io was too aggressive. You can counterbalance this by adding -ion and -iou to the list of silent syllables:

function countSpecialSyllables($scratch) { 
$additionalSyllables = array( '/\wlien/', // alien

but not lien 
'/bl$/',  // syllable 
'/io/',   // biography 
); 
$silentSyllables = array( '/\wely$/',

// absolutely but not ely 
'/\wion/',  // to counter the io match 
'/iou/', 
); 
$mod = 0; 
foreach( $silentSyllables as $pat ) { 
if(preg_match($pat, $scratch)) { 
$mod--; 
} 
} 
foreach( $additionalSyllables as $pat ) { 
if(preg_match($pat, $scratch)) { 
$mod++; 
} 
} 
return $mod;
}

The Word class passes the tests, so you can proceed with the rest of the implementation and calculate the number of words and sentences. Again, you start with a test case:

<?php
require_once "PHPUnit/Framework/TestCase.php";
require_once "Text/Statistics.inc";
class TextTestCase extends

PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase {
public $sample;
public $object;
public $numSentences;
public $numWords;
public $numSyllables;
public function setUp() {
$this->sample = "
Returns the number of words in the analyzed text

file or block. 
A word must consist of letters a-z with at least

one vowel sound, 
and optionally an apostrophe or a hyphen.";
$this->numSentences = 2;
$this->numWords = 31;
$this->numSyllables = 45;
$this->object =

new Text_Statistics($this->sample);
}
function _ _construct($name) {
parent::_ _construct($name);
}
function testNumSentences() {
$this->assertEquals($this->numSentences,

$this->object->numSentences);
}
function testNumWords() {
$this->assertEquals($this->numWords,

$this->object->numWords);
}
function testNumSyllables() {
$this->assertEquals($this->numSyllables,

$this->object->numSyllables);
}
}
if(realpath($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) == _ _FILE_ _) {
require_once "PHPUnit/Framework/TestSuite.php";
require_once "PHPUnit/TextUI/TestRunner.php";
$suite = new

PHPUnit_Framework_TestSuite('TextTestCase');
PHPUnit_TextUI_TestRunner::run($suite);
}
?>

You've chosen tests that implement exactly the statistics you need to be able to calculate the Flesch score of a text block. You manually calculate the "correct" values, for comparison against the soon-to-be class. Especially with functionality such as collecting statistics on a text document, it is easy to get lost in feature creep. With a tight set of tests to code to, you should be able to stay on track more easily.

Now let's take a first shot at implementing the Text_Statistics class:

<?php
require_once "Text/Word.inc";
class Text_Statistics {
public $text = '';
public $numSyllables = 0;
public $numWords = 0;
public $uniqWords = 0;
public $numSentences = 0;
public $flesch = 0;
public function _ _construct($block) {
$this->text = $block;
$this->analyze();
}
protected function analyze() {
$lines = explode("\n", $this->text) ;
foreach($lines as $line) {
$this->analyze_line($line);
}
$this->flesch = 206.835 -
(1.015 * ($this->numWords /

$this->numSentences)) -
(84.6 * ($this->numSyllables /

$this->numWords));
}
protected function analyze_line($line) {
preg_match_all("/\b(\w[\w'-]*)\b/", $line,

$words);
foreach($words[1] as $word) {
$word = strtolower($word);
$w_obj = new Text_Word($word);
$this->numSyllables += $w_obj->numSyllables();
$this->numWords++;
if(!isset($this->_uniques[$word])) {
$this->_uniques[$word] = 1;
}
else {
$this->uniqWords++;
}
}
preg_match_all("/[.!?]/", $line, $matches);
$this->numSentences += count($matches[0]);
}
}
?>

How does this all work? First, you feed the text block to the analyze method. analyze uses the explode method on the newlines in the document and creates an array, $lines, of all the individual lines in the document. Then you call analyze_line() on each of those lines. analyze_line() uses the regular expression /\b(\w[\w'-]*)\b/ to break the line into words. This regular expression matches the following:

\b       # a zero-space word break
(        # start capture
\w       # a single letter or number 
[\w'-]*  # zero or more alphanumeric characters

plus 's or –s 
# (to allow for hyphenations and

contractions
)        # end capture, now $words[1] is our

captured word
\b       # a zero-space word break

For each of the words that you capture via this method, you create a Word object and extract its syllable count. After you have processed all the words in the line, you count the number of sentence-terminating punctuation characters by counting the number of matches for the regular expression /[.!?]/.

When all your tests pass, you're ready to push the code to an application testing phase. Before you roll up the code to hand off for quality assurance, you need to bundle all the testing classes into a single harness. With PHPUnit::TestHarness, which you wrote earlier, this is a simple task:

<?php
require_once "TestHarness.php";
require_once "PHPUnit/TextUI/TestRunner.php";
$suite = new TestHarness();
$suite->register("Text/Word.inc");
$suite->register("Text/Statistics.phpt");
PHPUnit_TextUI_TestRunner::run($suite);
?>

In an ideal world, you would now ship your code off to a quality assurance team that would put it through its paces to look for bugs. In a less perfect world, you might be saddled with testing it yourself. Either way, any project of even this low level of complexity will likely have bugs.