sanmai/phpunit-double-colon-syntax

Double Colon Syntax for PHPUnit

0.1.2 2025-08-24 23:29 UTC

Requires

• php: >=7.1

Requires (Dev)

• brianium/paratest: ^7
• ergebnis/composer-normalize: ^2.8
• friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer: ^3.17
• infection/infection: >=0.30.3
• php-coveralls/php-coveralls: ^2.4.1
• phpstan/extension-installer: ^1.4
• phpstan/phpstan: ^2
• phpunit/phpunit: ^11 || ^12.2
• sanmai/phpstan-rules: ^0.3.7

BSD-3-Clause

• Alexey Kopytko

• testing
• phpunit
• dev

README

Double Colon Syntax for PHPUnit

PHPUnit doesn't natively support the file::method syntax commonly used in other testing frameworks, such as pytest (pytest test_file.py::test_method). However, I found that AI assistants frequently suggest this syntax and even strongly believe this syntax is a thing (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude), which is bonkers.

So it was always frustrating to see how an assistant generates a command using this syntax and fails, day after day, wasting time, tokens, context window, and my attention. Not anymore.

Now everyone can run individual test methods using the familiar file::method syntax:

vendor/bin/phpunit tests/ExampleTest.php::testItWorks

But before...

Installation

composer require --dev sanmai/phpunit-double-colon-syntax

That's it! No configuration needed. Works with PHPUnit 6 and above.

Usage

It works with multiple methods:

vendor/bin/phpunit tests/ExampleTest.php::test_one tests/ExampleTest.php::test_two

It does not work with --filter: you have to choose this or that syntax, not both.

How It Works

Uses Composer's autoloader to intercept and transform arguments before PHPUnit starts. The file::method syntax becomes file --filter method automatically. It targets specifically vendor/bin/phpunit and ignores everything else.