PHPUnit: How do I create a function to be called once for all the tests in a class?

Take a look at setUpBeforeClass() from section 6 of the PHPUnit documentation.

For the one time tearDown you should use tearDownAfterClass();.

Both this methods should be defined in your class as static methods.

I came to this page with the same question, however the accepted answer is ran on all classes, and for me was not the correct answer.

If you are like me, your first "Integration test" is to clear out the DB, and run migrations. This gets yourself at a database baseline for all test. I am constantly changing migration files at this point, so setting up the baseline is truly part of all tests.

The migration takes a while, so I do not want it run on all tests.

Then I needed to build up the database testing each piece. I need to write an order test, but first I need to create some products and test that, then I need to test an import fuction.

So, what I did is SUPER easy, but not explained extremely well on the internet. I created a simple test to setup the database. Then in your phpspec.xml file add a testsuite....

<testsuite name="Products">
    <file>tests/in/SystemSetupTest.php</file>
    <file>tests/in/ProductTest.php</file>
    <file>tests/in/ProductImportTest.php</file>
</testsuite>

And in the the SystemSetupTest.php ....

class SystemSetupTest extends ApiTester
{

    /** @test */
    function system_init()
    {
        fwrite(STDOUT, __METHOD__ . "\n");
        self::createEM(); //this has all the code to init the system...
    }
}

Then execute it like:

phpunit --testsuite Products

In the end, its a ton easier. It will allow me to build up my system correctly.

Additionally I am using laravel 5. When using setUpBeforeClass() I end up with bootstrap issues, which I am sure I can fix, but the method I use above works perfect.

setUpBeforeClass() is the way to do this if all of your tests are literally contained within a single class.

However, your question sort of implies that you may be using your test class as a base class for multiple test classes. In that case setUpBeforeClass will be run before each one. If you only want to run it once you could guard it with a static variable:

abstract class TestBase extends TestCase {

  protected static $initialized = FALSE;

  public function setUp() {
    if (!self::$initialized) {
      // Do something once here for _all_ test subclasses.
      self::$initialized = TRUE;
    }
  }

}

A final option might be a test listener.