Runing a single test case in PHPUnit

Sometimes when you're trying to nail down a failing test you need a quick way to run just the thing thats broken, instead of your whole suite or a whole test case. Fortunately it's pretty simple with the --filter flag provided by PHPUnit.

class PagesControllerTest extends \TestCase
{
   /** @test */
   public function it_displays_index_page()
   {
       $this->visit('/');
   }

   /** @test */
   public function it_displays_about_page()
   {
       $this->visit('/about');
   }

   /** @test */
   public function it_displays_terms_page()
   {
       $this->visit('/terms');
   }
}

If for whatever reason I'm having trouble with the terms page I can easily just run that failing test by calling --filter and providing the name of the test.

phpunit tests/PagesControllerTest --filter it_displays_terms_page

Better yet, it can match the start of test names. So, despite it being bad example above, if I wanted to run all the tests that start with it_displays_, I could go --filter it_displays_ and it'll run all the matching tests.