ScienceBoilerplate

DoesScience trait handles some of the boilerplate associated with performing experimental code refactoring using the PHP port of Scientist by Dayle Rees which is itself inspired by GitHub's Scientist.

Example refactoring

<?php

class myClass
{
  public function main()
  {
    $result = $this->oldCreakyMethod();
  }
  
  // ...
}

Lets refactor oldCreakyMethod by starting from some boilerplate:

<?php

class myClass
{
  use \thinkspill\DoesScience;
  
  public function main()
  {
    /** boilerplate start */
    $control = function (...$vars) {
        return call_user_func_array([$this, 'oldCreakyMethod'], func_get_args());
    };

    $trial = function (...$vars) {
        return call_user_func_array([$this, 'newShinyMethod'], func_get_args());
    };

    $this->makeScienceExperiment('Experiment Name', $control);
    $this->addExperimentTrial('trial 1', $trial);

    print_r($this->experimentReport($arg1, $arg2));
    /** boilerplate end */

    // $result = $this->oldCreakyFunction($arg1, $arg2);
  }
  
  private function oldCreakyMethod($arg1, $arg2)
  { 
    // ...
  }
  private function newShinyMethod($arg1, $arg2)
  { 
    // ...
  }
}

The experiment boilerplate code gets copy/pasted into the code location that calls the method being refactored, and modified to call the correct control and trial methods.

The only call that needs to retain the actual arguments of the method under refactor are those in the experimentReport call, due to the use of variable arguments everywhere else.

The experimentReport method will return the results of each experiment and if they matched.