Personally, I'm using windows task manager (cron can do the same thing on linux) to generate my unit test and send it to a text file every night.
Instead of display it directly in the web browser like I do, you could parse the result file directly on your server and then send the html output by email. So you could simply examine the result page on your local machine every morning like I do. Here's some code to start up your solution (on windows/PHP).
In task manager:
Action 1: C:\xampp\htdocs\PC_administration_interface\Controler\Script\launch_automatic_test.bat
Action 2: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
Argument action 2: http://localhost/PC_administration_interface/view/unit_test.php?DISPLAY_RESULT=TRUE
Launch_automatic_test.bat
@echo off
call %~DP0\launch_xampp.bat
call %~DP0\..\..\..\..\xampp_shell.bat
cls
call %~DP0\run_unit_test.bat > "%~DP0\..\test_result.txt"
launch_xampp_bat
@echo off
tasklist | find /i "xampp-control.exe" && goto :eof
start /b "xampp-control.exe" "C:\xampp\xampp-control.exe"
And here's a sample of run_unit_tets.bat
@ECHO OFF
CLS
REM GEM_MECHANIC_TESTS
ECHO.
ECHO FILE : GEM_MECHANIC_MANAGER_TEST.PHP
ECHO.
CALL PHPUNIT %~DP0/../../../GEM_MECHANIC/CONTROLER/TEST/GEM_MECHANIC_MANAGER_TEST.PHP
ECHO.
ECHO.
REM GEM_MECHANIC_INTERFACE_BUILDER_TESTS
ECHO.
ECHO FILE : HTML_GEM_MECHANIC_MANAGER_TEST.PHP
ECHO.
CALL PHPUNIT %~DP0/../../../GEM_MECHANIC/CONTROLER/TEST/TEST_INTERFACE_BUILDER/HTML_GEM_MECHANIC_MANAGER_TEST.PHP
ECHO.
ECHO.
Then I'm launching a web page that parse my result and display it in the web browser:
public static function fetchTestResult(&$errorMessage){
$echoString = '';
$failure = false;
$fileContent = '';
$errorMessage = '';
$dbManager = GeneralDbManager::getInstance();
if (file_exists(realpath(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/test_result.txt')) {
@$fileContent = file(realpath(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/test_result.txt');
if ($fileContent === false){
$errorMessage = $dbManager->getErrorMessage('UNIT_TEST_RESULT_LOG_ERR', "An error happened while reading the unit tests results log.");
}
else{
unlink(realpath(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/test_result.txt');
if (file_exists(realpath(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/script/temp_unit_test.bat')) {
unlink(realpath(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/script/temp_unit_test.bat');
}
$echoString = HtmlTagBuilder::createCustomTextArea("TA_UNIT_TEST_RESULT", TextAlign::ALIGN_LEFT, false, 1100, 500);
foreach ($fileContent as $line){
if (StringManager::stringStartWith($line, "FILE :")){
$failure = false;
$echoString .= HtmlTagBuilder::addLineCustomTextArea($line, CustomTextAreaLine::TITLE_LINE);
}
elseif (StringManager::stringStartWith($line, "time:")){
$echoString .= HtmlTagBuilder::addLineCustomTextArea($line, CustomTextAreaLine::WARNING_LINE);
}
elseif (StringManager::stringStartWith($line, "OK (")){
$echoString .= HtmlTagBuilder::addLineCustomTextArea($line, CustomTextAreaLine::SUCCESS_LINE);
}
elseif ((StringManager::stringStartWith($line, "There ") and strpos($line, "failure") !== false)
or $failure === true){
$failure = true;
$echoString .= HtmlTagBuilder::addLineCustomTextArea($line, CustomTextAreaLine::ERROR_LINE);
}
elseif (strpos(strtolower($line), "failure") !== false){
$echoString .= HtmlTagBuilder::addLineCustomTextArea($line, CustomTextAreaLine::ERROR_LINE);
}
else{
$echoString .= HtmlTagBuilder::addLineCustomTextArea($line, CustomTextAreaLine::REGULAR_LINE);
}
}
$echoString .= '</DIV><br><br>';
}
}
else{
$errorMessage = $dbManager->getErrorMessage('UNIT_TEST_NO_RESULT_LOG_ERR', "You must run the unit test and generate the test log before displaying it.");
}
return $echoString;
}
Additional note: I'm currently getting some information about CGI and it seem that it is pretty inefficient. You might also consider take a look at this post (question and answers):
What is Common Gateway Interface (CGI)?