Consistency with architectural testing

Yesterday, I asked whether class names should include suffixes or be named a certain way in your application.

I said that consistency is key.

But how do you enforce these rules to keep things consistent?

It could be done manually in a code review or pair programming session, but it would be better if it could be automated.

Similar to phpcs for code linting and automated tests that ensure functionality works as expected, architectural tests allow you to define and run your own architectural rules.

For example, I could write this to ensure Action classes don't have the Action suffix:

function test_action_classes_are_not_suffixed(): Rule
{
return PHPat::rule()
->classes(Selector::inNamespace('App\Action'))
->shouldBeNamed(
fqcn: '/^(?!.*Action$).*$/',
regex: TRUE,
);
}

This is using PHPat - an extension for PHPStan - that finds all classes in an App\Action namespace and checks the class name matches the given format.

If the class name is incorrect, PHPStan will return an error:

App\Action\DoesSomethingAction should be named matching the regex /^(?!.Action$).$/

I created more examples to ensure the classes are final, read-only and don't extend or implement anything.

PHPat has an examples page of potential use cases for architectural tests, and how to implement layered architectures or Model-View-Controller.

Pest PHP also has an architectural testing library so, if you use PHP, try both and see which works best for you.