Phpunit reusable test methods in symfony - symfony

Question

Let's assume that I have three entites: UserEntity, ZooEntity and AnimalEntity. In order to create zoo I have to create user, because zoo has to have owner. In order to create animal I have to create zoo.
Going further I have 3 controllers for each entity. I also have 3 test classes for controller testing.
UserControllerTest
ZooControllerTest
AnimalControllerTest
In animal test, every time, in each test (to make every test independent) I have to create user and then zoo. Therefore I created traits eg: UserTestTrait and ZooTestTrait which have createUser and createZoo(user) methods.
I was wondering about chaning those traits into services. But then where I should keep them?
Would be tests/services/ZooService a good place?
For now I such structure:
tests/Controller/Rest/ZooControllerTest
tests/Controller/Rest/traits/ZooTestTrait
Assuming that I have those services and every service should have access to eg. entity manager, how can I access that in service? eg. ZooService located in tests/services/ZooService
How can I use that service in controller? Lets assume that I would like to have it in setUp method:
protected function setUp(): void {
$kernel = self::bootKernel();
// access the zoo service, that has access to the entity manager
}

Answer 1

I found myself a better approach. Using DoctrineFixturesBundle is a very satisfying way of providing test data. It's even better, when you integrate the Fixtures into your Tests - which might slow them down, but the quality gain is super convenient.
see this tutorial
My AbstractControllerTest Class looks similar to this:
<?php
namespace App\Tests\Functional\Controller;
use App\DataFixtures\AbstractAppFixtures;
use App\DataFixtures\UserFixtures;
use Doctrine\Common\DataFixtures\DependentFixtureInterface;
use Doctrine\Common\DataFixtures\Executor\ORMExecutor;
use Doctrine\Common\DataFixtures\Purger\ORMPurger;
use Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\DataFixtures\ContainerAwareLoader;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\KernelBrowser;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Test\WebTestCase;
use Symfony\Component\BrowserKit\Cookie;
abstract class AbstractControllerTest extends WebTestCase
{
/**
* #var ORMExecutor
*/
private $fixtureExecutor;
/**
* #var ContainerAwareLoader
*/
private $fixtureLoader;
/**
* set up before test
*/
public function setUp(): void {
$kernel = static::getKernelClass();
static::$kernel = new $kernel('dev', true);
static::$kernel->boot();
static::$container = static::$kernel->getContainer();
$this->addFixture(new UserFixtures());
}
/**
* #param AbstractAppFixtures $fixture
*/
protected function addFixture(AbstractAppFixtures $fixture) {
$add = true;
$activeFixtures = $this->getFixtureLoader()->getFixtures();
foreach ($activeFixtures as $activeFixture) {
if (get_class($activeFixture) === get_class($fixture)) {
$add = false;
}
}
if ($add) {
$this->getFixtureLoader()->addFixture($fixture);
if ($fixture instanceof DependentFixtureInterface) {
/** #var AbstractAppFixtures $parentFixture */
foreach ($fixture->getDependencies() as $parentFixture) {
if (class_exists($parentFixture)) {
$this->addFixture(new $parentFixture());
}
}
}
}
}
/**
*
*/
protected function executeFixtures() {
$this->getFixtureExecutor()->execute($this->getFixtureLoader()->getFixtures());
}
protected function getContainer() {
if (static::$container) {
return static::$container;
}
return static::$kernel->getContainer();
}
/**
* #return ORMExecutor
*/
private function getFixtureExecutor() {
if (!$this->fixtureExecutor) {
$em = $this->getEm();
$this->fixtureExecutor = new ORMExecutor($em, new ORMPurger($em));
}
return $this->fixtureExecutor;
}
/**
* #return ContainerAwareLoader
*/
private function getFixtureLoader() {
if (!$this->fixtureLoader) {
$this->fixtureLoader = new ContainerAwareLoader($this->getContainer());
}
return $this->fixtureLoader;
}
}

Answer 2

One thing you might want to consider is to introduce test data builder. Just because you have that dependency of Animal -> Zoo -> Owner doesn't mean that you have to deal with it in your tests. Of course, without having seen your tests, it's hard to tell. But I assume that, when testing the AnimalController, it is important that a valid Animal exists, not so much in which exact zoo with which exact owner. But even if that's the case, you could make your test data builders do the work for you.
The data builders don't deal with persistence, though. But this is a good thing, since you could use them for both, unit and functional tests.
I usually split up my test folder usually into Unit, Integration, Functional and Support. Support being support code for the tests. Regarding your question where to put the service, this would also be in Support. That being said, you probably won't even need the service you have thought of. The data builder create the entities you need in your tests, so you just have to persist it.