Measure intermediate throws and record a baseline

[veewee]

A normal encode or decode throws and catches exceptions as control flow. #70 showed what that costs: a 3MB response took 6 seconds to decode and 0.6 seconds once the throwing lookups were gone. Most of these throws come from reflecta lookups for every stdClass property and every absent element, plus a try chain in the untyped scalar decoder and a type lookup in php-soap/engine for soap-enc arrays. This PR is the first of a stack that removes them. It adds the measurement and records a baseline. It changes nothing under src/.

Measurement

ThrowCounter switches on xdebug.show_exception_trace at runtime while a callable runs and parses the traces Xdebug prints for every throw, caught or not. That needs Xdebug in develop mode, so assertNoThrows() skips without it and the pcov jobs behave as before. A canary test throws and catches one exception and expects exactly one event, so a parser that stops matching after an Xdebug upgrade fails loudly. composer test:throws runs the no-throws group under develop mode and fails when its tests are skipped. A new workflow runs it on PHP 8.4 with Xdebug. I did not exclude the group in phpunit.xml because the tests already skip cleanly without develop mode, and an exclusion would hide them from anyone who runs the suite with develop mode on.

composer throws:report runs the whole suite under develop mode with a PHPUnit extension that attributes each throw to its test and site. It only counts throws whose stack passes through src/, in tests that do not expect an exception, so the comparable() test helper and the metadata building in wsdl-reader stay out of the numbers. Xdebug prints the traces into the test's output buffer, which PHPUnit treats as risky output, so the extension is only registered by the script and the script runs with --no-results --do-not-fail-on-risky. phpunit.xml and its strict output checks are unchanged. None of this runs during benchmarks.

Baseline

I also ported the sparse decode benchmarks and the two ObjectEncoderTest cases from #70, without its src changes, and added one integration scenario per kind of intermediate throw. Encoding a class with uninitialised typed properties had no coverage at all. The scenarios assert today's output. The assertNoThrows() assertions arrive in the PRs that bring each scenario to zero.

Intermediate throws on the suite as it is on main: 1269 throws in total, 940 of them outside src/ and 26 in tests that expect an exception, which leaves 303. These numbers are on veewee/reflecta 1.0.0. CI resolves ^1.0 to the newest release, so with reflecta 1.1.0 the report on main shows 190 intermediate throws in 57 tests: its non-throwing properties_set removes the stdClass hydration row without any change here.

Throw	Via	Throws	Tests
reflecta UnreflectableException on stdClass hydration	ObjectEncoder.php:131	166	71
Psl CoercionException and RestrictionException in the untyped scalar chain	ScalarTypeEncoder.php:46, :51, :68	91	26 or more
engine MetadataException for a builtin soap-enc item type	SoapArrayAccess.php:43	22	14
reflecta ArrayAccessException for an absent element or attribute	ObjectEncoder.php:160	12	10
reflecta UnreflectableException for an absent property on encode	ObjectEncoder.php:160	8	6
Psl AssertException from a test encoder that calls veewee/xml	OptionalElementEncoder.php:52	4	1

Xdebug sometimes keeps showing a stale frame after an exception was caught in the same function, so the split of the scalar chain over its three lines changes between runs, while its total of 91 stays the same.

Throws per scenario, warm:

Scenario	Throws
decode sparse response into stdClass	19
decode nil element into stdClass	14
decode single occurrence of a repeating element	14
encode stdClass with absent properties	7
encode sparse array input	8
encode uninitialised typed properties	14
decode untyped values	11
decode soap-enc array of a builtin type	1

On the benchmark fixture, a complete literal decode throws 12 times, a complete literal encode 0 times and the sparse literal decode 21 times.

Benchmarks, vendor/bin/phpbench run benchmarks/ --report=aggregate with Xdebug off (PHP 8.4.13, macOS):

Benchmark	Subject	Revs	Its	Mem peak	Mode	Rstdev
EncodeBench	benchLiteral_x1	100	5	9.842mb	73.205μs	±11.71%
EncodeBench	benchLiteral_x500	1	5	9.842mb	35.620ms	±3.22%
EncodeBench	benchEncoded_x1	100	5	9.848mb	116.652μs	±2.80%
EncodeBench	benchEncoded_x500	1	5	9.848mb	57.515ms	±2.32%
EncodeBench	benchExtSoapLiteral_x1	100	5	9.814mb	7.117μs	±3.17%
EncodeBench	benchExtSoapLiteral_x500	1	5	9.814mb	3.768ms	±2.46%
EncodeBench	benchExtSoapEncoded_x1	100	5	9.814mb	11.428μs	±4.37%
EncodeBench	benchExtSoapEncoded_x500	1	5	9.814mb	5.904ms	±3.31%
DecodeBench	benchLiteral_x1	100	5	10.012mb	85.347μs	±5.55%
DecodeBench	benchLiteral_x500	1	5	10.012mb	39.891ms	±2.19%
DecodeBench	benchLiteralSparse_x1	100	5	10.006mb	76.028μs	±3.44%
DecodeBench	benchLiteralSparse_x500	1	5	10.006mb	38.164ms	±1.78%
DecodeBench	benchEncoded_x1	100	5	10.052mb	116.398μs	±13.71%
DecodeBench	benchEncoded_x500	1	5	10.052mb	57.570ms	±2.71%
DecodeBench	benchExtSoapLiteral_x1	100	5	9.818mb	10.434μs	±3.04%
DecodeBench	benchExtSoapLiteral_x500	1	5	9.818mb	5.532ms	±9.24%
DecodeBench	benchExtSoapEncoded_x1	100	5	9.818mb	15.006μs	±4.18%
DecodeBench	benchExtSoapEncoded_x500	1	5	9.818mb	8.055ms	±2.78%

The fixture has only 12 elements, so the throws are a small share of its decode time. The large gain from #70 came from a 3MB response.

Follow-up PRs

This PR should be merged first, because the benchmarks workflow only compares subjects that already exist on the base branch. The next PR in the stack, #74, replaces the throwing lookups and the scalar try chain in this package. The one after it, #75, picks up the non-throwing properties_set from veewee/reflecta#37 and the non-throwing type lookup from php-soap/engine#30, and adds a CI guard that fails on any intermediate throw.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Testing
  • Added expanded checks for SOAP encoding and decoding of sparse responses, nil values, missing properties, untyped scalars, and integer arrays.
  • Added tools to detect and report intermediate exceptions during tests, including grouping them by source location.
  • Added automated test runs for exception tracking.
• Benchmarks
  • Added sparse SOAP response benchmarks at single-item and 500-item scales.

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📒 Files selected for processing: 16

• .github/workflows/throws.yaml
• benchmarks/ComplexTypeBenchTrait.php
• benchmarks/DecodeBench.php
• composer.json
• tests/Fixture/Model/Address.php
• tests/Fixture/Model/Item.php
• tests/Integration/IntermediateThrowScenariosTest.php
• tests/Support/Throws/AssertsNoThrows.php
• tests/Support/Throws/ThrowAttribution.php
• tests/Support/Throws/ThrowAttributionExtension.php
• tests/Support/Throws/ThrowCounter.php
• tests/Support/Throws/ThrowEvent.php
• tests/Support/Throws/ThrowFrame.php
• tests/Support/Throws/XdebugExceptionTraceParser.php
• tests/Unit/Encoder/ObjectEncoderTest.php
• tests/Unit/Support/Throws/ThrowCounterTest.php

📝 Walkthrough

Adds Xdebug-based throw capture and attribution tools, PHPUnit reporting and tests, and a workflow for running throw-counting tests. Also adds SOAP encoding and decoding scenarios, model fixtures, absent-property tests, and sparse-response decode benchmarks.

Changes: Throw Capture and Attribution

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Capture and parse Xdebug throw traces tests/Support/Throws/ThrowFrame.php, tests/Support/Throws/ThrowEvent.php, tests/Support/Throws/XdebugExceptionTraceParser.php, tests/Support/Throws/ThrowCounter.php, tests/Support/Throws/AssertsNoThrows.php, tests/Unit/Support/Throws/ThrowCounterTest.php	Adds throw-event and stack-frame objects, parses Xdebug exception traces, captures events while restoring settings, and provides an assertion that reports unexpected throws. Unit tests cover captured event details and grouped assertion failures.
Attribute throws and report results tests/Support/Throws/ThrowAttribution.php, tests/Support/Throws/ThrowAttributionExtension.php, composer.json, .github/workflows/throws.yaml	Adds test-level attribution and a PHPUnit extension that starts and stops tracing, handles test events, and prints a report. Adds Composer scripts and a workflow that runs composer test:throws.

SOAP Scenarios and Sparse Decode Benchmarks

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Exercise encoding and decoding scenarios tests/Fixture/Model/Address.php, tests/Fixture/Model/Item.php, tests/Integration/IntermediateThrowScenariosTest.php, tests/Unit/Encoder/ObjectEncoderTest.php	Adds model fixtures and integration scenarios for sparse and nil data, absent properties, untyped values, and encoded integer arrays. Unit tests check that absent XML elements and attributes decode as null.
Benchmark sparse literal decoding benchmarks/ComplexTypeBenchTrait.php, benchmarks/DecodeBench.php	Adds a literal SOAP response containing only id and address.city, with decode benchmarks at x1 and x500 scales.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~25 minutes

Change: Other

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant PHPUnit
  participant ThrowAttributionExtension
  participant ThrowAttribution
  participant ThrowCounter
  participant XdebugExceptionTraceParser
  PHPUnit->>ThrowAttributionExtension: publish test lifecycle events
  ThrowAttributionExtension->>ThrowAttribution: start test attribution
  ThrowAttribution->>ThrowCounter: enable throw tracing
  ThrowAttributionExtension->>ThrowAttribution: pass printed test output
  ThrowAttribution->>XdebugExceptionTraceParser: parse exception traces
  XdebugExceptionTraceParser-->>ThrowAttribution: return throw events
  PHPUnit->>ThrowAttributionExtension: finish execution
  ThrowAttributionExtension->>ThrowAttribution: stop tracing and render report
  ThrowAttributionExtension-->>PHPUnit: print attribution report

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Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to 3dd2a

This change adds test and benchmark tooling only and does not alter runtime code. The throw-counting helper can hide unexpected output, and the throw report may undercount in tests that expect output. These are worth addressing but do not block merging.

Pre-merge checks: 4 · 1

Failed checks: 1 warning

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage		Docstring coverage is 23.64% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 55 functions across 14 files. (2 skipped:…	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

Passed checks: 4 passed

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check		Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check		Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check		Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check		The title clearly summarizes the main changes: measuring intermediate throws and recording a baseline.

Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 23.64% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 55 functions across 14 files. (2 skipped: 2 unsupported.)

✨ Finishing Touches: 💡 1

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Review comments at @tests/Support/Throws/ThrowAttributionExtension.php:
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• composer.json
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• tests/Integration/IntermediateThrowScenariosTest.php
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• tests/Support/Throws/ThrowCounter.php
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