Test database isolation with Behat 3, Doctrine 2 and Symfony 2 - symfony

Question

I am introducing functional behat tests on a Symfony2/Doctrine2 application and am deciding how to handle database isolation and data fixtures.
Are there any pitfalls to setting up a separate test environment with its own completely separate mysql database that gets populated by a dump import prior to execution of the behat test suite, and then emptied after suite execution? I'm trying to avoid using data fixtures unless I really need so as to save the time of manually writing foreign key relations and what not.
Any guidance is appreciated.

Answer 1

As far as Symfony/Doctrine/Behat is concerned and if you want to be one of those who follows the best practises then:
You should isolate your environment dev, test, prod, stag ...
Setting up isolated environments as a symfony application base
up to Build folder structure header.
You should isolate your test database and use sqlite instead of
MySQL for performance purposes. Using multiple SQLite entity
managers for multiple bundles and databases in test environment,
you can use only one.
You should use fixtures to give yourself flexibility and get rid of
burden of manual processing. Do not try to avoid using them!
Creating doctrine data fixtures in symfony
So on ..... just check the posts in this site which I often
read up on myself.
Behat 3 composer entries and the behat.yml

Answer 2

We currently have a separate test database and use a combination of both fixtures and prepopulated database.
The prepopulated database contains the minimum information that needs to be present in almost all tests. We used to do this with fixtures but it was too slow, so now we populate the DB like so:
/**
* #BeforeScenario
*/
function initialiseStorage(BeforeScenarioScope $scope)
{
$con = $this->getService('database_connection');
$con->executeUpdate("SET foreign_key_checks = 0;");
$filePath = $this->getMinkParameter('files_path').'/test_db.sql';
$con->exec(file_get_contents($filePath));
$con->executeUpdate("SET foreign_key_checks = 1;");
}
And then, we load the specific fixtures for every test case like Alfonso described.
We use MYSQL for our tests as in our experience the bottleneck is not the DB but doctrine's metadata caching. If you set up metadata caching in redis the speed of the tests increase dramatically.

Answer 3

In order to respond to #madness-method and to complete the following answer:
The prepopulated database contains the minimum information that needs
to be present in almost all tests. We used to do this with fixtures
but it was too slow, so now we populate the DB like so:
/**
* #BeforeScenario
*/
function initialiseStorage(BeforeScenarioScope $scope)
{
$con = $this->getService('database_connection');
$con->executeUpdate("SET foreign_key_checks = 0;");
$filePath = $this->getMinkParameter('files_path').'/test_db.sql';
$con->exec(file_get_contents($filePath));
$con->executeUpdate("SET foreign_key_checks = 1;");
}
And then, we load the specific fixtures for every test case like
Alfonso described.
We use MYSQL for our tests as in our experience the bottleneck is not
the DB but doctrine's metadata caching. If you set up metadata caching
in redis the speed of the tests increase dramatically.
You should use instead:
/**
* #BeforeScenario
*/
function initialiseStorage(BeforeScenarioScope $scope)
{
$con = $this->em->getConnection();
$con->executeUpdate("SET foreign_key_checks = 0;");
$filePath = $this->getMinkParameter('files_path').'/test_db.sql';
$con->exec(file_get_contents($filePath));
$con->executeUpdate("SET foreign_key_checks = 1;");
}
having the following code in your Context file:
private $em;
public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $em)
{
$this->em = $em;
}
Do not forget to add the following lines in your behat configuration file regarding your contexts in order to be able to use the entity manager in your constructor and then in your initialiseStorage method :
- AppBundle\Features\Context\FeatureContext:
em: '#doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager'
Basically to get the connection, we have replaced:
$this->getService('database_connection');
by:
$this->em->getConnection();

Answer 4

I recommend you to read something about factory girl pattern. The idea is create a
factory for every class that you have and use a instance of it in the test. I use https://github.com/carlescliment/handy-tests-bundle
Other options will be create your own steps to create a instance or the class something like this:
/**
* #Given /^there are products:$/
*/
public function thereAreRoutes(TableNode $table)
{
$em = $this->getEntityManager();
foreach ($table->getHash() as $hash) {
$entity = new Product();
$entity->setName($hash['name']);
$entity->setDescription(isset($hash['description']) ? $hash['description'] : $hash['description']);
$em->persist($entity);
}
$em->flush();
}
And you can use it like:
Given there are products:
| name | description |
| Shoes | It is blue |