我想推荐Gerard Meszaros的《xUnit测试模式》一书。它很大，但在单元测试方面是一个很好的资源。这里有一个链接到他的网站，在那里他讨论了单元测试的基础知识。http://xunitpatterns.com/XUnitBasics.html

单元测试是在不需要该代码单元所依赖的基础设施的情况下对代码单元(例如单个函数)进行测试。即在隔离环境中进行测试。

例如，如果您正在测试的函数连接到数据库并执行更新，那么在单元测试中您可能不想执行该更新。如果这是一个积分测试，你会这样做，但在这个例子中，它不是。

因此，单元测试将测试您正在测试的“函数”中所包含的功能，而不会产生数据库更新的副作用。

假设函数从数据库中检索了一些数字，然后执行标准偏差计算。你想测试什么?标准偏差计算正确，还是数据从数据库返回?

在单元测试中，您只想测试标准偏差的计算是否正确。在集成测试中，您希望测试标准偏差计算和数据库检索。

我在大学里从未学过单元测试，我花了一段时间才“学会”它。我读到它，心想“啊，对，自动化测试，我想那应该很酷”，然后我就忘记了。

It took quite a bit longer before I really figured out the point: Let's say you're working on a large system and you write a small module. It compiles, you put it through its paces, it works great, you move on to the next task. Nine months down the line and two versions later someone else makes a change to some seemingly unrelated part of the program, and it breaks the module. Worse, they test their changes, and their code works, but they don't test your module; hell, they may not even know your module exists.

现在你有了一个问题:坏代码在主干中，甚至没有人知道。最好的情况是内部测试人员在您发布之前就发现了它，但是在游戏后期修复代码的成本很高。如果没有内部测试人员发现它……嗯，这确实会非常昂贵。

The solution is unit tests. They'll catch problems when you write code - which is fine - but you could have done that by hand. The real payoff is that they'll catch problems nine months down the line when you're now working on a completely different project, but a summer intern thinks it'll look tidier if those parameters were in alphabetical order - and then the unit test you wrote way back fails, and someone throws things at the intern until he changes the parameter order back. That's the "why" of unit tests. :-)

测试驱动开发在某种程度上取代了单元测试这个术语。作为一个老手，我会提到它的更一般的定义。

单元测试还意味着测试一个较大系统中的单个组件。这个组件可以是dll、exe、类库等。它甚至可以是多系统应用程序中的单个系统。因此，单元测试最终是对一个更大系统的单个部分进行测试。

然后，您可以通过测试所有组件如何一起工作来进行集成测试或系统测试。

I think the point that you don't understand is that unit testing frameworks like NUnit (and the like) will help you in automating small to medium-sized tests. Usually you can run the tests in a GUI (that's the case with NUnit, for instance) by simply clicking a button and then - hopefully - see the progress bar stay green. If it turns red, the framework shows you which test failed and what exactly went wrong. In a normal unit test, you often use assertions, e.g. Assert.AreEqual(expectedValue, actualValue, "some description") - so if the two values are unequal you will see an error saying "some description: expected <expectedValue> but was <actualValue>".

总之，单元测试将使测试更快，对开发人员来说更舒服。您可以在提交新代码之前运行所有的单元测试，这样就不会中断同一项目中其他开发人员的构建过程。

This is my take on it. I would say unit testing is the practice of writing software tests to verify that your real software does what it is meant to. This started with jUnit in the Java world and has become a best practice in PHP as well with SimpleTest and phpUnit. It's a core practice of Extreme Programming and helps you to be sure that your software still works as intended after editing. If you have sufficient test coverage, you can do major refactoring, bug fixing or add features rapidly with much less fear of introducing other problems.

当所有单元测试都能自动运行时，这是最有效的。

单元测试通常与OO开发相关联。基本思想是创建一个脚本，为你的代码设置环境，然后练习它;您编写断言，指定您应该接收的预期输出，然后使用如上所述的框架执行您的测试脚本。

框架将针对您的代码运行所有测试，然后报告每个测试的成功或失败。phpUnit默认情况下从Linux命令行运行，尽管有HTTP接口可用于它。SimpleTest本质上是基于web的，在我看来，它更容易启动和运行。结合xDebug, phpUnit可以为您提供代码覆盖率的自动统计数据，有些人认为这非常有用。

有些团队从他们的subversion存储库编写钩子，以便在提交更改时自动运行单元测试。

将单元测试保存在与应用程序相同的存储库中是一个很好的实践。