naji-dev

Everytime i write unit or functional tests in symfony, i have following problem:

Sometimes my tests do not run deterministically because previous ran tests created data, which intefere with following tests. For example (a simple, not really smart one) think of a system which knows one (and only one) user. For my DAL i would test a method like “createUser” or something. Later on i would create a functional test for a registration form. Now the correctness of the tests depend on the sequence, i run the tests. But this should not be this way! Every time i run a test, i have to know the data before i run a part of my software and i have to know how my software manipulates the data (speaking of the date after running my software). The only way i knew to ensure this state, was to run build-all-reload (as in Symfony 1.2 with Doctrine as ORM) to get a fresh database with the predefined fixtures.

Any software you develop will enlarge, and so the tests will, too. After a time you will get to the point, where you can not run a build-all-reload after each test for some reasons. So how about clearing the database before a test runs like the following?

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$browser = new ndTestFunctionalDoctrine(new sfBrowser());
 
$browser->
  reloadData()->
  info('1 - Make a test on a clean database with defined fixtures only')
;

This is what ndTestFunctionalDoctrine offers to test-writing symfony-developers. The only thing you have to handle is: Run reloadData() in your code each time you run a test, which does not depend on the test direct before the current.

Like for functional tests i have a small helper, which can be put to the end of test/bootstrap/unit.php:

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new sfDatabaseManager($configuration);
 
// helper
function reloadData()
{
  // try to drop the database (an exception is thrown,
  // when the database does not exist)
  try
  {
    Doctrine::dropDatabases();
  }
  catch (Exception $e){ }
 
  // create database
  Doctrine::createDatabases();
 
  // create tables
  Doctrine::createTablesFromModels(sfConfig::get('sf_lib_dir') . '/model');
 
  // load fixtures
  Doctrine::loadData(sfConfig::get('sf_data_dir') . '/fixtures');
}

Analog to this, a version for propel could be build if doctrine is not the ORM of your choice.